National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
Pacific West Region
Beyond the Golden Gate
A Maritime History
of California
HISTORIC RESOURCES STUDY
THE SAN FRANCISCO MARITIME
NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK
DIGITAL VERSION
Beyond the Golden Gate
A Maritime History
of California
THE SAN FRANCISCO MARITIME NATIONAL
HISTORICAL PARK
HISTORIC RESOURCES STUDY
TIMOTHY G. LYNCH
PREPARED UNDER COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT WITH
THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN HISTORIANS
iOAH
ORGANIZATION" OF
American
Historians
www.oah.org
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
Pacific West Region
May 2012
Cover Image: Balclutha, now the flagship of the
San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park,
was once part of a tremendous grain fleet that
served the West Coast of North America. At the
height of the grain trade, 559 vessels partici-
pated in one year. Here she is on one of her many
trips around Cape Horn. Courtesy San Francisco
Maritime National Historical Park. A6.35795pl, n.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface ii
Introduction: From Prehistory to Postcontainerization 1
Chapter 1: The Natural Setting 2
Chapter 2: Indigenous Uses of California Waterways 16
Chapter 3: Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California 26
Chapter 4: Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American 42
Chapter 5: The Gold Rush 67
Chapter 6: Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities 92
Chapter 7: Fishing and Whaling 1 12
Chapter 8: Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters ... 134
Chapter 9: Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, and Passengers 154
Chapter 10: Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade 167
Chapter 11: Shipbuilding and Labor Issues 181
Chapter 12: Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways 208
Bibliography 230
PREFACE
On June 27, 2013, the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park (SAFR) will cele-
brate its twenty-fifth anniversary. 1 To commemorate the event, the National Park Service
(NPS) — in partnership with the Organization of American Historians — has commissioned
this historic resource study (HRS) to outline the past, present, and future of SAFR using its
housed collections, resources, and catalog. The HRS is a "historical overview of the Park's
maritime subject matter . . . relating park resources to their broad historical contexts, to
other maritime sites and structures in the Bay Area, . . . while outlining the place of the Park
and its resources in the ongoing effort to study, preserve, and interpret West Coast mari-
time history." Based on primary and secondary research, this project provides an informed
framework for maritime history preservation and development along the entire West Coast,
with SAFR as the nexus, and synthesizes this information into a comprehensive, historical
narrative of the maritime events and activities that have occurred within the San Francisco
Bay watershed. This study adds to our current understanding of the role that San Francisco
played in America's maritime history and elucidates the role of maritime affairs in city's
history. After all, the connections between San Francisco and the sea run long and deep,
and provide many opportunities for serious scholarly investigation.
Although the study places the story of Bay Area maritime history within the larger
context of the maritime history of the Pacific Coast and the nation, it focuses primarily
on the role of the Bay Area as the nexus for West Coast shipping and commerce from the
mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. While the park's mandate extends
to the maritime history of the whole of the United States (with a particular emphasis on
the Pacific Coast), this study focuses on the West Coast, particularly the San Francisco Bay
region because, in general, San Francisco was the hub of West Coast maritime affairs from
the latel840s into the 1950s. However, the HRS must — by necessity — consider the larger
patterns of trade and commerce encompassing the whole of the coast, the nation, and even
the Pacific Basin. In so doing, this study should not merely be considered "an evaluation
and assessment of current or future resources," but should also be seen as a reflection of the
breadth and depth of the park's holdings while serving as a prism through which the NPS
and SAFR might better achieve its mission, denned in the enabling legislation of June 27,
1988, to "preserve and interpret the history and achievements of seafaring Americans and
of the Nation's maritime heritage, especially on the Pacific coast." 2
The San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park is one of the more challenging
sites about which to write an HRS. First, it is unusual as a national park in that its mandate
does not relate to its physical location or to particular events or individuals associated with
it. Rather than being organized around a single person, incident, or region, as are most
other national historical parks, SAFR is organized around a broadly defined subject area
with a central theme: the role that maritime San Francisco played in the development of
the West Coast, in particular, and of the United States, in general. Additionally, the park
The San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park was established as an independent NPS entity in
1989, having previously been a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
The enabling legislation states: "In order to preserve and interpret the history and achievements of seafar-
ing Americans and of the Nation's maritime heritage, especially on the Pacific coast, there is hereby estab-
lished the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park" (Public Law 100-348, June 27, 1988).
11
contains some of the most diverse resources found within any NPS unit, including the
buildings and grounds of the Aquatic Park National Historic Landmark (NHL) District,
seven historic vessels (six of which are NHLs), a collection of museum objects relating to
West Coast maritime history, an archive of original documentary material, a library of
published materials, and a brick warehouse building, now leased as the Argonaut Hotel,
which contains a visitor's center. In general, the park's collections, including its major
vessels, have been selected because of their relevance to the maritime history of the West
Coast, particularly San Francisco. The diversity of these resources — each of which can be
analyzed, appreciated, and interpreted in many ways — adds a level of complexity to this
project, but also underscores the need for a historic resource study. Owing to this complex-
ity, a variety of methodologies and approaches were utilized to create an HRS that is both
broad and deep.
In order to preserve the research findings and write a history that is detailed and thor-
ough yet readable, this study connects the maritime history of the greater Bay Area to the
collections and resources of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. Here,
I analyze not only events but also individuals that distinguish the history of maritime San
Francisco. The study situates the region and its actors into larger historical and geopolitical
contexts, focusing on the prominent role of global trade (lumber, sugar, grain, oil, gold, and
so on) and resource acquisition (for example, pelts, whales, fish). The story is told in relation
to the park and what it stands for, focusing on the major themes the collection represents
and the ways in which these have developed and been refined over time.
The finished product, then, represents a synthesis of information, making sense of a
story that has yet to be presented cohesively. Offered here is a clear and concise narrative
that offers a wide-angle view of maritime history along the Pacific Coast, thus allowing
for greater ease of interpretation while providing a level of information and analysis that
traces the trajectory of themes that have been the traditional focal points of the collection.
In addition to serving as a baseline narrative for SAFR staff and visitors alike of the park's
important themes, places, and times, the HSR will simultaneously guide park management
in considering the important themes to focus on in terms of collections acquisitions, analy-
sis, and interpretation.
in
introduction:
From Prehistory to Postcontainerization
This volume is intended as a primer on the maritime history of California and represents the
first systematic investigation into that region's long relationship with the sea. Drawing on
both primary and secondary materials, it is presented as a work of synthesis so others inter-
ested in the broad subject of California's maritime history can further their own interests
while adding to their knowledge of this fascinating topic. It is, therefore, as much the culmi-
nation of many years work as it is the commencement of other projects. My hope is that the
information presented here will spur increased interest in, and scholarship about, the mari-
time history of California.
California's relationship with the sea is long and rich; indeed, one could make the
case that the history of California is preeminently maritime. From its first inhabitants to its
current tourism, the rivers, lakes, and oceans of the Golden State have assumed a central
role in California's history. Even the great seal of the State of California offers a maritime
perspective. The foreground features the goddess Minerva, sprung full-grown from the
brain of Jupiter. A brown bear, feeding on a cluster of grapes, watches a miner ply his trade
before a depiction of the Sierra Nevada range, attesting to both the natural beauty of the
state and the gold rush that gives the state its motto, "Eureka" ("I have found it"). Most tell-
ing, however, are the half dozen or so ships that occupy much of the center of the image: one
knows not what they are named, where they are headed, or the business in which they are
engaged. Still, the intent of the artist is clear: California is built upon a connection to the sea,
and this connection is as important to the state as agriculture, mining, or other activities.
This volume mirrors that intent.
Maritime history is itself a peculiar field of study. Long seen as the purview of
amateurs, it has only recently been embraced by professional scholars, who have focused
primarily on the East Coast. The few works that address the maritime history of the Great
Lakes, Gulf Coast, and Pacific have tended to be superficial accounts of one's experiences,
or highly detailed economic treatises that draw little connection to larger, transcendent
themes. Through the lens of Pacific maritime history, this book attempts to redress some
of these shortcomings and propose new avenues for investigation in all realms of mari-
time scholarship. 1 1 hope this volume — with its synergistic look at geography, exploration,
seaborne commerce, warfare, recreation, and countless other areas of investigation — will
serve as a touchstone for further study.
1 Among the few works that look at maritime California in a holistic fashion is a self-published volume
by an avocational writer. Martin Riegel, California's Maritime Heritage (San Clemente, CA: Riegel
Publishers, 1987).
CHAPTER 1
The Natural Setting
Today, the maritime aspects of California are inescapable. From advertisements and popular
images that trumpet the long, uninterrupted beaches of Southern California to the econom-
ic impact of shipping in the San Francisco Bay area, few matters of life in California are
untouched by access to the Pacific. However, recreational, martial, and other manifestations
of maritime usage present a dichotomy that confounds contemporary observers as much as it
did past ones. 1 The waters belonging to and beyond the golden shores of California simulta-
neously represent opportunity and challenge, prosperity and danger.
Seaborne commerce, for example, carries American goods to the seemingly inex-
haustible markets of Asia, while bringing immigrants — and nonnative species — to the
self-proclaimed land of opportunity. Additionally, fishing and recreational pursuits remain
prominent activities in California waters, as they do across the Pacific, but come with envi-
ronmental and ecological costs. Moreover, the bustling navy town of San Diego allows the
United States to project its power and influence across the world, while serving as one of
the engines of what is the world's fifth-largest economy. Even the interior of the state, often
depicted as farming mecca, mountainous retreat, or desert wasteland, is clearly affected by
access to navigable, potable, and life-giving water. From the wellsprings of the Sacramento
River to the bounty of Lake Tahoe, the rich agricultural and recreational aspects of modern
California depend upon water. As one axiom states, "where water flows life follows." Indeed,
when NASA scientists and other prognosticators look for signs of life outside Earth, they
use the presence of water to make their determination. Even today, modern Californians
avoid the parched interior region of their state, save for those intrepid souls willing to cross
Death Valley en route to Las Vegas or another manmade oasis. Ironically, the arid regions
of California's southern interior — including Death Valley — were once part of a great sea, as
evidenced by the salt, borax, gypsum, and soda deposits still harvested there today, and by
the numerous marine fossils embedded in the rocks.
This apparent acknowledgment of the maritime heritage of California was not always
the case. Geographically speaking, California is not as blessed as other locales when it comes
to maritime affairs, which is somewhat surprising given the provenance of the Golden State.
The name California itself was probably derived from a popular Spanish novel, first published
in 1510, in which a fictional paradise was first described. Garci Ordonez de Montalvo's Las
Sergas de Esplandiin (The Deeds of Esplandian) describes California as "an island on the right
hand side of the Indies . . . abounding in gold and precious stones it is a notoriously extraor-
dinary place ... its history has been largely influenced by its geography: its extreme isolation,
its extraordinary climate." 2 A party of Spanish conquistadores, crossing the Sea of Cortes from
Mexico in 1533, mistakenly believed that the peninsula on which they landed was an island,
and honored this territory with the name California. Not long after the expedition, numer-
ous maps were developed by American, Asian, and European cartographers that depicted the
1 See Philip Steinberg, The Social Construction of the Oceans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001).
2 Quoted in Kevin Starr, California: A History (New York: Random House, 2005), 10.
The Natural Setting
region as an island, separate from the mainland. In time, the name California was designated
to the whole of the region, although the initial peninsula, which was termed Baja California,
was differentiated from its northern neighbor, Alta California. 3 While one would expect the
idyllic representation of the region as one graced by ready access to water to translate into a
ready ability to conduct maritime business, this was not the case.
Those long, uninterrupted beaches so popular with surfers, tourists, and sun worship-
pers do not make for easy (or profitable) maritime activity. Neither do the rocky points and
jagged cliffs of the Northern California coast. Compared to the Atlantic Seaboard and Gulf
Coast, California is at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to deepwater ports and safe
harbors; moreover, its rugged, hilly terrain provides little refuge where ships of any appreciable
size could take cover in a storm. Indeed, along the entire 1,264-mile coastline — comprising
half of the coastline of the western continental United States and nearly one-tenth of all the
Lower 48 — that stretches from Mexico to the Oregon border, there are but a handful of natural
harbors: San Diego, Monterey, San Francisco Bay, and Humboldt Bay are among the few nota-
ble havens found between latitudes 32° and 42° north, the geographical confines of the state.
It should be noted that these features are not unique to California, and similar state-
ments apply to other parts of the American Pacific coast. For example, some geographers claim
that north of San Francisco Bay for nearly a thousand miles there is "hardly a cover to protect
vessels" of any size. If we included Oregon and Washington in this study, only Coos Bay, the
Columbia River, Grays Harbor, and Puget Sound could be added to the list of suitable ports
along the corridor from Mexico to British Columbia. 4 This rather finite list does little to inspire
confidence in any but the most intrepid of sailors. The manmade port of Los Angeles/Long
Beach — one of the busiest in the world today — serves as a testament to what can be accom-
plished by a massive infusion of federal capital, but it was virtually a creation of the twentieth
century — when explorer Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo marked the inlet on his crude seventeenth-
century chart, it was little more than a dismal and barren mud flat. Compared to the several
dozen accessible ports and harbors on the Atlantic Seaboard and Gulf Coast then, California
is an inhospitable coast. Even worse, in many parts of the state, the rocky promontories that
make up the coastline make inshore navigating virtually impossible.
Added to the paltry list of safe harbors are other natural barriers. The prevailing
California Current is powerful: running at a quarter knot, it makes for treacherous sail-
ing along the North American Pacific coast. Originating in the waters off British Columbia,
the current flows southward through Baja California. 5 The tide reveals a five-to-seven-
foot difference during the daily cycle, further hampering maritime activities. Prevailing
northwesterly winds add to the current's effects, causing considerable upwelling of colder
subsurface waters, the result being the characteristic California coastal fog, and a continual
replenishment of nutrients to the surface layer. The chilly California Current transports
great amounts of enriched, mineral-laden water from the depths; this sustains large amounts
of plankton, which, in turn, serve as food for larger marine life. The rich fish resource also
3 Alta California described that which lies north of the Baja Peninsula and which would be transferred to
the United States as a consequence of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American
War.
4 Morgan Gibson Arrell and John Whitehead, Yankees in Paradise: The Pacific Basin Frontier (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1993), 15.
5 The California Current is part of the North Pacific Gyre, a system that also contains the Japan
(or North Pacific) and Kuroshio Currents.
The Natural Setting
sustains millions offish-eating birds, a rich pelagic community, sea otters, and count-
less other forms of life. These nutrients provide ample food for whales and other marine
life, but the conditions that make good eating for one species make bad sailing for others.
With the prevailing winds and currents beating in the face of northward sailors, it is little
surprise that the development of the Pacific coast is a relatively recent phenomenon. Sailors
heading north from South America were more likely to find themselves propelled into the
Pacific than guided toward California's shores. When they were lucky enough to avoid being
pushed out to sea, other natural features added to the difficult nature of navigating along the
California coast: offshore islands such as Bishop Rock (near San Diego) and the Farallones
(a group of six windswept islands that lie twenty-eight miles west of San Francisco); tremen-
dous kelp beds at Monterey and Morro Bay; and a hazardous bar crossing at Humboldt
Bay. Add to this the notorious fog-shrouded entrance to San Francisco and the windswept
precipices of the Redwood Coast, and you have a recipe for disaster. Perhaps these physical
features, more than any other factor, are to blame for the 1,547 shipwrecks currently docu-
mented in California waters. 6
Thomas P. H. Whitelaw
The perilous waters, congested shipping lanes, and assorted hazards of San Francisco
Bay and the entire California coastline invite disaster. But disaster invites opportunity, and
Captain Thomas Whitelaw was nothing if not opportunistic.
Arriving penniless in the United States from his native Scotland, the entrepreneurial
Whitelaw achieved success by profiting from the misfortunes of others. Whitelaw arrived
in San Francisco in 1863, at the tender age of sixteen. By 1875, he was involved in marine
salvage, and remained an active salvage diver for the next six decades. Salvage divers sped to
the site of shipwrecks, rescued imperiled crew members, and negotiated with ship captains
based on the value of any vessel or cargo they could reclaim from the sea. Whitelaw was
the best at his business. Using the lumber schooner Greenwood and an eponymous 176-ton
steamer, he was able to both modernize and professionalize the marine salvage industry.
Utilizing equipment that today would be deemed antiquated but which represented the
cutting edge of salvage technology in his career, Whitelaw was able to amass a considerable
fortune by retrieving some 300 vessels and cargo that had been lost to the sea. Throughout
his career, divers associated with his company made some 17,000 dives.
Whitelaw's career was subject to scorn and derision, but the work of his crews was
instrumental in saving countless lives, both directly — from those who were plucked from icy
waters — and indirectly — by the information that divers furnished to government agencies
responsible for improving navigation along California's waterways. Whitelaw died in 1932,
at age eighty-six.
California State Lands Commission, "California Shipwreck Database," http://www.shipwrecks.slc.ca.gov.
See also Donald B. Marshall, California Shipwrecks: Footsteps in the Sea (Seattle: Superior Publishing
Company, 1978). James P. Delgado and Stephen A. Haller, Shipwrecks at the Golden Gate: A History of
Vessel Losses from Duxbury Reef to Mussel Rock (Nevada City, CA: Lexicos, 1989) details Bay Area marine
casualties. See also James P. Delgado, "Searching for History: Underwater Archaeology at the Golden
Gate," Sea Letter 64 (2003): 11-14; Robert C. Belyk, Great Shipwrecks of the Pacific Coast (New York:
John Wiley and Sons, 2001); and Bonnie J. Cardone, Ed Grove, and Patrick Smith, Southern California
Shipwrecks (Birmingham, AL: Menasha Ridge Press, 1990).
The Natural Setting
Furthermore, while there are innumerable rivers, streams, and inlets that provide
access to the interior along the East Coast, few such channels exist along the California
shoreline. About the only advantage the Pacific coast has relative to its eastern counter-
part is proximity to the shoaled areas of the Gulf of the Farallones. Here, offshore fisher-
men could access seemingly inexhaustible supplies of various commodities. Not much
farther south, one encounters deep trenches: where the Continental Shelf extends far to
sea on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, it plunges quickly off the Pacific coast, with depths of
over 100 fathoms (600 feet) found just a few miles from shore. Off Monterey, for example,
there looms an undersea chasm as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon. The effects of such
depths can be seen in the forests of kelp hugging the shore and the huge populations of sea
otter, sharks, and other life that teem in the region. In addition to rich fisheries, the deep
trenches contain valuable oil deposits (at one time California produced a million barrels of
petroleum per day, and the American military efforts of both World War I and World War
II were largely fueled by California oil) and a complicated and complex ecology. Offshore,
gray whales migrate annually to their breeding grounds, while countless other species —
from dolphins to salmon and tuna — swim in huge schools or as solitary passersby. Closer to
shore, the biotic exuberance of innumerable tide pools attract and enchant everyone from
preschoolers to postdoctoral marine biologists.
Even if one were to overcome these obstacles and arrive on the shores of California,
other impediments remain. While the Sacramento-San Joaquin-Stockton River system
allows for entree into the rich agricultural interior of the state — averaging 50 miles wide
and at more than 400 miles long, the Central Valley represents the largest agricultural
region west of the Rocky Mountains — it remained hidden for centuries. The fog-shrouded
entrance of San Francisco Bay, into which the rich system emptied, was obscured by the
natural camouflage of the region: large islands and the low-lying hills of the Contra Costa
blanketed the harbor's narrow inlet. Passing mariners, therefore, had little clue that therein
was housed the most prodigious bay in the American Pacific — a harbor "large enough to
house all the ships in all the world's navies." 7 Indeed, in one of the great ironies of American
maritime history, San Francisco Bay was discovered not by mariners, but rather by members
of an overland expedition, sent north from Monterey to thwart competing imperial Russian
interests in the region. 8
Once landfall is made, overland explorations into the interior of the state are difficult.
Tremendous mountain ranges — the Sierra Nevada, Cascade, Klamath, Tehachapi, Coast,
Transverse, and Peninsula — block access by terrestrial routes, but their snowcapped peaks
provide runoff precipitation that feeds the rivers that cross the state. The runoff, in turn,
is carried by a series of rivers that supply drinking water for urban residents and irrigation
for rural farmers. The Sacramento River, longest in the state at 382 miles runs from Mount
Shasta in the southern Cascade Mountains to its junction with the San Joaquin River, a river
that rises in the Sierra Nevada near Yosemite and meanders northward for 330 miles. The
San Joaquin is itself composed of the Tuolumne, Stanislaus, Fresno, Merced, Calaveras,
Consumnes, Mokelumne, and other smaller rivers, and flows through the trough of the
7 Cited in K. Maldetto, The Discovery of San Francisco Bay (1542-1769), http://www.foundsf.org/index.
php?title=The_Discovery_of_San_Francisco_Bay
8 On the early discovery of San Francisco Bay, see Miguel Costanso, The Discovery of San Francisco Bay,
The Portol Expedition, 1769-70 (Lafayette, CA: Great West Books, 1992).
The Natural Setting
Central Valley, bringing much-needed water to that agricultural district. The Central Valley
was covered by the Pacific Ocean in prehistoric times and by huge freshwater lakes created
by retreating Sierra glaciers. These forces deposited rich alluvial soil and minerals that
account for the productivity of the land, productivity that is replenished and assured by the
waters of the Delta today.
The rivers can be anything from turbulent to placid, depending on precipitation
levels, elevation changes, and countless other factors. Other tributaries, such as the
American, Feather, McCloud, Indian, Yuba, and Pit Rivers, join the confluence, uniting
to form a large inland San Joaquin-Sacramento Delta that empties into Suisun Bay, the
extreme eastern arm of San Francisco Bay. This, in turn, forms one of the largest estuar-
ies in the United States and is a haven for waterfowl and birdwatchers alike. The innu-
merable rivers, channels, and sloughs mix with tidal marshes to form one of the richest
environments in North America: the Delta. Thick with wildlife and serving as a nursery
for countless species, the Delta can be seen as "California's Everglades," home to species
found nowhere else. It also represents the only break in the mountains that separate the
Central Valley from the Pacific coast; as such, almost the entire drainage of the valley
passes through this hourglass delta, and from the Carquinez Strait into San Pablo and San
Francisco Bays and the Pacific beyond.
Further north, along the Redwood Coast, the eastern slopes of the Coast Range are
drained by the Russian and Klamath Rivers (and several smaller ones), which provide access
to the interior, but which for all intents and purposes are adumbrated and truncated water-
ways that obscure more than they reveal. South of San Francisco, interior access is equally
difficult, as the 155-mile Salinas River is the most notable egress into the Coast Range. In the
southern part of the state, the 1,450-mile Colorado River runs across the California- Arizona
border before flowing directly into the Sea of Cortes (Gulf of California). The Colorado
River is one of the few reliable water sources in an otherwise arid region; other southern
California rivers are intermittently dry creek beds, and are unreliable even in wet weather.
Despite these conditions, conditions that determine much of the economy of the Southwest,
California has more than its share of water when compared to other regions, although it is
not always where most needed.
Indeed, although the state as a whole receives sufficient water for its needs, precipita-
tion is spotty and uneven: most occurs between November and April, and some areas receive
comparatively little in relation to other parts of California. In the Sacramento River valley,
periodic floods have inundated the communities of Stockton, Oroville, and others; in the
arid southwest, precipitation is so rare that agriculture and animal grazing are virtually
unheard of. Thus, water must be stored carefully and transported over long distances for
distribution; much of the water needs to be diverted for irrigating farmland, for hydroelec-
tric purposes, and to serve as drinking water for parched Californians. State and federal
projects dealing with water reallocation issues have resulted in historically heated debates,
and sometimes, in tragically heated actions. 9
For more on this issue, see Robert Sauder, The Lost Frontier: Water Diversion in the Growth and
Destruction of Owens Valley Agriculture (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994); Marc Reisner,
Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water (New York: Penguin Books, 1993); and
John W. Simpson, Dam!: Water, Power, Politics, and Preservation in Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite National
Park (New York: Pantheon Books, 2005).
The Natural Setting
In contrast to this abbreviated river system, California has several hundred lakes,
ranging from the Saltan Sea, formed in 1905 when the Colorado River broke its banks and
flooded an ancient lakebed (at 233 feet below sea level, this briny lake covers some 376 square
miles), and Lake Tahoe (deep and picturesque, it sits high in the Sierras, at 6,225 feet, form-
ing part of the state boundary between California and Nevada) to manmade reservoirs and
watersheds. Many of the natural lakes, such as Tahoe, resulted from glaciation and seismic
activity such as faulting, which are largely responsible for the imposing mountain ranges that
so define California's landscape. Today, the lakes — both natural and manmade — are used for
irrigating the agricultural sector of the state, for providing drinking water to the residents of
Los Angeles and other communities, and for recreational purposes by millions of outdoors-
men and their families. In centuries past, aboriginal persons used the bounty of the waters to
supplement their diet, transport goods, and maneuver war parties from one part of the state
to another.
The few accessible deepwater harbors along the California coast are notable for their
geography and their history 10 Moving north from Mexico, one encounters, in turn, San
Diego, Monterey, San Francisco, and Humboldt. While numerous smaller inlets and coves
dot the coastline, these four ports are the only ones capable of accommodating anything
larger than a sloop or pinnace. Each has various advantages and drawbacks, but all are valu-
able given the relative paucity of other safe anchorages along the California coast.
San Diego, a landlocked natural harbor of a dozen miles, was the first California
harbor European mariners encountered. 11 Located 16 miles north of the Mexican-American
border, and 110 miles south of Los Angeles, the harbor was described by Sebastian Vizcaino,
a mariner sailing in the employ of Spain, as "the best in all the South Sea." 12 San Diego is
protected from the Pacific Ocean by a slender, mile-long strip of land known as the Silver
Strand. Point Loma, a 7-mile-long promontory, provides further protection from the capri-
cious Pacific winds, making the bay an attractive location for sailors past and present. The
bay, like most other Pacific seascapes, was formed by a combination of seismic activity and
glacial movement. The sliding of one plate past another, or the diving of one plate beneath its
neighbor, formed natural depressions infilled by water retreating glaciers left during succes-
sive ice ages.
Since the time of the conquistadores, San Diego has been used as a shipbuilding and
repair facility; today, the port is home to the largest shipbuilding facility on the West Coast.
Another denning feature of San Diego's past is its connection to the military: from colonial
outpost and Spanish presidio to "birthplace of naval aviation," the community has always
had a strong military presence. Since the early years of the twentieth century, the city has
taken on an increased martial tone, and has served as home to the United States Navy,
becoming a veritable military town. Today home to a large naval fleet, the port also boasts
10 For a good overview of California's ports, see James H. Hitchman, A Maritime History of the Pacific Coast,
1540-1980 (New York: University Press of America, 1990). See also Harriet E. Huntington, California
Harbors (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).
11 For a good overview, consult Donald R. Stewart, Frontier Port: A Chapter in Sari Diego History (Los
Angeles: The Ward Ritchie Press, 1965).
12 Richard F. Pourade, The Explorers: The Brave Men Who First Saw California (San Diego: Union Tribune
Publishing Company, 1960).
The Natural Setting
the largest concentration of naval facilities in the world. 13 Currently headquarters to the
Eleventh Naval District and for US Marine Corps and Coast Guard bases, one can witness
a frenetic pace of training, as shore boats ferry military personnel from ship to pier or as
new recruits endure basic training in the immediate area. Many current residents are active
or retired military, who enjoy the relentless sunshine and access to Southern California
attractions. The city of San Diego and its environs, moreover, boast a number of highly
touted educational institutions, and a world-class maritime museum, that present a well-
detailed history of the region's relationship with the sea. Today, recreational fishing parties
return with catches of yellowtail, barracuda, and swordfish, although the tuna clippers that
once brought in huge hauls of the fish that made San Diego a sportfishermans' paradise for
decades have ceased to be profitable. 14
Moving north, one finds ample anchorage for smaller craft, but none that could accom-
modate the larger sailing ships of the Iberian imperials or their later counterparts. The first
suitable deepwater port north of San Diego, and one of the few between that port and San
Francisco, is Monterey. A semicircular bay, Monterey contains an enormous amount of
marine life: mammals such as sea otters, harbor seals, and bottlenose dolphins share the
waters with gray whales that make use of the Monterey Canyon, an underwater trough two
miles deep. The canyon's depth and nutrient availability, owing to the regular influx of nutri-
ent-rich sediment, provide a habitat suitable for many marine life forms. Known today mostly
for its world-class aquarium and access to the golf course communities of Carmel-by-the-Sea,
the port was one of the most important in Spanish — and, later, Mexican — California. The
deep waters of the bay, formed like all Pacific ports by plate tectonics, could accommodate the
largest of sailing ships, and the rich marine life in the area sustained a highly profitable fishing
community until to the close of the twentieth century. Now mostly a tourist location, the port
continues to handle its share of fishing and pleasure craft and remains an economically vital
part of the California economy. Today, the 5,300-square-mile Monterey Bay National Marine
Sanctuary protects fully one-fifth of all California coastal waters and serves to educate many
about the coastal environment of the Golden State. 15
The major port in the American Pacific for most of its existence, San Francisco is the
next harbor one would encounter sailing north along the California coast.
Deemed "large enough to house all the ships in all of the world's navies," the inlet to
the bay was cloaked from view for centuries, hidden by dense fog, low-lying hills and other
13 A concise history of the military in San Diego can be found in Roger W. Lotchin, Fortress California:
From Warfare to Welfare (Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 1992). On the navy in that community,
see Bruce Linder, San Diego's Navy: An Illustrated History (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2001).
14 On various aspects of San Diego's maritime heritage, consult Carl Reupsch, They Came from the Sea: A
Maritime History of San Diego (San Diego: Cabrillo Historical Association, 1979). On the tunafishery and
its decline, see August J. Felando, "California's Tuna Clipper Fleet, 1918-1963," Mains'l Haul: A Journal
of Pacific Maritime History 32, no. 4, and 33, nos. 1-3 (1996-1997): 6-17, 16-27, 28-39, August J. Felando,
"'Into the Valley of Death': The 1950s and the Decline of California's Tuna Clippers," Mains'l Haul: A
Journal of Pacific Maritime History 38, no. 4, and 39, no. 1 (2002 and 2003): 18-27; and Lawrence J. Bradley
and Julius H. Zolezzi, "The End of the Line: The Story of the San Diego Tuna Fleet," Mains'l Haul: A
Journal of Pacific Maritime History 44, nos. 1-2 (2008): 8-27.
15 The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary is one of four such locales in the state, the others being
Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, and
Cordell Banks National Marine Sanctuary. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
manages and protects the waters and seabed of these and other national marine sanctuaries.
The Natural Setting
natural camouflage. 16 Writing on the cusp of the gold rush, one prescient commentator
observed:
The position of San Francisco for commerce is, without doubt, superior to any
port on the Pacific coast of North America The waters are of sufficient depth
to admit the largest ship ever constructed, and so completely land-locked and
protected from winds is the harbor that vessels can ride at anchor in perfect
safety in all kinds of weather. .. a more approachable harbor, or one of greater
security, is unknown to navigators . . . this place is, doubtless, destined to
become one of the largest and most opulent commercial cities in the world, and
under American authority it will rise with astonishing rapidity. 17
The bay, like most of the California coast, was formed by the grinding and sliding
action of tectonic plates, some 8,000 years ago. The North American and Pacific plates
have been involved in a sometimes balletic but more often ballistic relationship, grinding
against one another or diving beneath their neighbor. These actions, aided by glacial flows,
volcanic thrusts, and other natural forces, formed the rugged coastline and deep harbors of
the coast. The very same forces, then, that account for seismic activity along fault lines was
responsible for the creation of one of the most important seaports in world history. 18
The bay is believed to have been formed by the collision of two tectonic plates, the
Hayward to the east and San Andreas to the west. A downwarping of the earth's crust at
this point created a shallow basin of some 400 square miles; adding the San Pablo, Suisun,
and other "sub-bays" — which creates the "greater San Francisco Bay" and which is a
common and accepted practice — more than quadruples this figure. During the last ice age,
glaciation and runoff filled this basin, leaving only the tops of several hills — including, most
notably the Farallones, Angel Island, Alcatraz, and Yerba Buena Island — above the water
(which can range to a depth of 240 feet). Measuring anywhere from 3 to 12 miles wide and
at nearly 50 miles long, the bay receives roughly 40 percent of all California waters, which
enter through the northern estuaries of Suisun and San Pablo Bays and depart through the
Golden Gate and into the Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, the geographical unity of the bay
allowed for port development at virtually any point within its confines.
Since the mid-1800s, much of the original basin has been changed, either intentionally
or by accident, converting it to "one of the largest and most extensively modified estuaries
16 California State Lands Commission, "California Shipwreck Database."
17 Edwin Bryant, What I Saw in California: Being a Journal of a Tour, by the Emigrant Route and South Pass
of the Rocky Mountains, Across the Continent of North America, the Great Desert Basin, and Through
California, in the Years 1846-1847 (New York: Appleton and Company, 1849).
18 A good overview of and introduction to San Francisco's maritime history can be found in John Haskell
Kemble, San Francisco Bay: A Pictorial Maritime History (New York: Cornell Maritime Press, 1957). See
also Robert Schwendinger, International Port of Call: An Illustrated Maritime History of the Golden Gate
(Woodland Hills, CA: Windsor Publishers, 1984). Wayne Bonnett, San Francisco: Gateway to the Pacific
(Sausalito, CA: Windgate Press, 2010), looks at the role of shipping companies in international trade.
Michael R. Corbett, Port City: The History and Transformation of the Port of San Francisco, 1848-2010 (San
Francisco: San Francisco Architectural Heritage Press, 2011) is a recent study that ties the development of
the city to the rise of the port, paying particular attention to geographical considerations and architectural
aesthetics. Jasper Rubin, A Negotiated Landscape: The Transformation of San Francisco's Waterfront since
1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) investigates the recent history of the port.
The Natural Setting
in the world." 19 Runoff from hydraulic mining operations in the Sierra foothills introduced
so much sediment into the bay that its depth was permanently reduced by dozens of feet.
One estimate suggests that eight times the amount of material that was excavated during
the construction of the Panama Canal was added to the Bay as a result of these mining
techniques. 20 Bay filling, whereby parts of the waterfront were cordoned off and filled in
with debris to make new land, was widely practiced in the era of the gold rush, as entre-
preneurs sought to create waterfront lots with access to deep water. 21 Soil excavated from
building projects or dredged from ship channels was deliberately added to these water lots
to provide a foundation for later construction. The city boundaries were increased in some
areas by as much as a quarter mile, leading one observer to note that the city resembled a
"Venice made of pine." 22 Unfortunately, the damp substrate of these water lots is subject to
liquefaction during earthquakes, and much of the damage associated with seismic activ-
ity in the region can be traced to these waterfront locations. Worse, as a result of reduced
freshwater inflows resulting from damming and diverting of rivers, and owing to the intro-
duction of pesticides and domestic and industrial wastes, the overall health and productiv-
ity of the San Francisco Bay declined precipitously after the gold rush.
Despite the impact of human settlement and industry, the Bay remains an important
ecological preserve. As part of one of the world's largest estuaries, it is home to a staggering
number of organisms and species: from Dungeness crabs to sea lions and marine mammals,
and from waterfowl to various species offish, the Bay represents one of the most diverse
and complex ecosystems found in the contiguous United States. 23 Brackish salt marshes
support brine shrimp, shorebirds, and other organisms higher up on the food chain, all
the while serving as niters, providing key ecosystem services by leaching pollutants and
sediments from the water. These saltwater marshes grade into intertidal mudflats and
open water, sustaining an extremely productive ecosystem that comprises one of the great-
est contiguous expanses of wetland habitats on the Pacific Coast of the Americas. Today,
environmental organizations are hard at work ensuring that these features remain for later
generations. 24
19 Robert Grossinger, "Documenting Local Landscape Change: The San Francisco Bay Area Historical
Ecology Project," in The Historical Ecology Handbook: A Restorationist's Guide to Reference Ecosystems,
ed. Dave Egan and Evelyn A. Howell (Washington DC: Island Press, 2001), 425-42.
20 Matthew Booker, "Oyster Growers and Oyster Pirates in San Francisco Bay," Pacific Historical Review 75,
no. 1(2006): 63-88, esp. 71.
21 See Gerald R. Dow, "Bay Fill of San Francisco: A History of Change" (master's thesis, San Francisco State
University, 1973).
22 Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna, "Paginas de mi diariodurantetresanos de viaje, 1853-1854-1855," in Obras
Completas de Vicuna Mackenna, 2 vols. (Santiago: Universidad de Chile, 1936), 1:26.
23 At low tide, the bay measures 450 square miles of water within its shore line of approximately 100 miles,
making it the second-largest estuary in the United States (following Chesapeake Bay); each day it handles
seven times more water than does the Mississippi River Delta.
24 By 1960, the Bay was one-third smaller than it had been just 100 years earlier, and 90 percent of the tidal
marshlands had been lost or cut off from access to water by filling, dredging, and assorted activities. By
that time, nearly 2,000 acres were lost each year as a series of levees had reduced the amount of freshwater
entering San Francisco Bay by one-half. John Hart and David Sanger, San Francisco: Picture of an Estuary
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
10
The Natural Setting
Bay-Delta Model
The challenges of navigating in the greater San Francisco Bay Area have long plagued
mariners. The impact of assorted human interactions — most notably hydraulic mining,
bay filling, and dredging — have made this even more unpredictable. With these facts in
mind, Congress authorized the US Army Corps of Engineers to undertake a study that
analyzed the physical effects of human activity on the Bay and Delta waterways. Although
the proposed damming of San Francisco Bay never materialized, this study did have one
tangible result: the construction of a hydraulic scale model that covered more than an
acre and a half, or about two football fields. Housed in a former shipyard warehouse in
Sausalito, the San Francisco Bay-Delta Model is a three-dimensional representation of the
San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that simulates tides, currents, river
inflows, and other variables affecting water quality and movement in the estuary.
Built in 1957, the Bay Model Visitor Center provides scientists, educators, policy-
makers, and citizens the opportunity to view the complete Bay-Delta system at a glance.
Using 180,000 gallons of water to mimic local conditions, the model sees tides change
every 3.8 minutes, and recreates the 24-hour tidal flow in just under a quarter of an
hour. This allows researchers to interpret critical issues affecting the environment — such
as waterborne pollution and oil spills — as well as navigation, flood control, and other
hydrologic features throughout the watershed.
Advancements in computer technology have made large-scale models obsolete,
as computer simulations can replicate the work of dozens of scientists and engineers for
a fraction of the cost in time and resources. Today, schoolchildren have replaced scien-
tists as the most frequent visitors to the Bay-Delta Model, and the mission has changed
to one of outreach and education, as the staff focuses on the natural history of the Bay
and Delta, along with critical environmental issues affecting the watershed.
Some 250 miles north of the Golden Gate, along the Redwood Coast, is the last of
California's major ports. In a region full of anchorages so small that only a dog could find
room enough to turn around — hence the term dog-hole ports — Humboldt Bay stands out
as a haven for sailors and ships in need. As the second-largest natural bay in the state,
Humboldt sits along a rugged, windswept coast, and is the only sizable harbor in the
600-mile-long run of coastline between San Francisco and Coos Bay, Oregon. A visitor to
the region described the scene that greeted him in 1850:
The land is the most beautiful I ever saw . . . large hills sloping down to the
water, and beautiful plateaus. It is a bay bountifully supplied by nature The
redwood, cedar, spruce, hemlock, oak and alder abound. Fruits such as raspber-
ries, currants, strawberries, hazels, cherries are abundant, but what exceeds
all I ever saw is the quantity of game and fish — elk, deer, black and grizzly bear,
beaver, otter, geese, ducks, snipe, robin, partridge — are without number. 25
Like San Francisco, this bay — named for the famed German scientist Alexander von
Humboldt — was first "discovered" by an overland expedition, since it was blocked from
25 Quoted in Wallace E. Martin, Sail and Steam on the Northern California Coast, 1850-1900 (San Francisco:
National Maritime Museum Association, 1983), ix.
11
The Natural Setting
seaborne exploration by a narrow and treacherous opening that includes a hazardous bar
crossing. 26 An extensive dune ecosystem, formed by sediments washed away by the plenti-
ful rains in the region, and augmented by winter swells that scour the beach and add to the
accumulation, sustains a rich and varied biosystem. The center of an important and lucra-
tive logging industry in the nineteenth century, Humboldt was home to a thriving lumber
and shipbuilding industry, with a beehive of activity centered on company mill towns.
The unique geography of California at once invited and thwarted maritime opportu-
nities. While this might seem paradoxical, it is nothing new: just as modern mariners and
earlier seafarers alike struggled with ways to maximize their use of California waterways
without endangering the natural beauty of the region or their own safety. We shall now
look at how indigenous Californians utilized the waterways of the Golden State before the
nickname was applied to their homeland.
26 The dangers of the Humboldt Bar and the historic efforts to tame it are described in Susan Pritchard
O'Hara and Gregory Graves, Saving California's Coast (Spokane: Arthur H. Clark, 1991). For the hazards
of navigating the Mendocino Coast, see Karl Kortum and Roger Olmsted, "'. . . it is a dangerous looking
place': Sailing Days on the Redwood Coast," California Historical Quarterly 50 (March 1971): 1-19.
12
The Natural Setting
Lack of geographical knowledge did not
prevent cartographers from produc-
ing magnificent works of art. Louis
Hennepin's imaginative 1699 lithograph
is among several examples that depict
California as an island, separate from
mainland North America.
The deepwater anchorages and protected
harbor of San Francisco made it an
ideal port for mariners seeking refuge
along the California coast. This modern
image shows both the natural features
of the Bay and Delta and the impact of
human settlement and development on
the region.
Courtesy University of Minnesota,
James Ford Bell Library.
r
WnK^vS\
TF"
1
K 1
ii?
JlgiSEl
«U
n ■- — i
r~
'W***^*^^ 1 -* !^*"dl4»E. l
—••Mi
Courtesy United States Geological Survey.
13
The Natural Setting
The perils of navigating along the
Pacific Coast of North America can
be seen in this image, taken shortly
after an accidental grounding on
approach to the Columbia River bar.
The French ship Alice, with her cargo
of cement driving her deep into the
sand, was a total loss. Note the individ-
uals standing in the rigging.
The increasing pace of maritime activ-
ity along the West Coast demanded that
impediments to navigation be removed.
Here, Shag Rock is dynamited out of
existence in a dramatic show captured
by the photographer's lens.
Modern-day hydrographic charts attest
to the fact that hazards to navigation
remain a prominent feature outside of
the deepwater shipping channels that
mark San Francisco Bay.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. E3.381p1.
Courtesy James Allan, William Self Associates,
Orinda, CA. and US Army Corps of Engineers.
Courtesy National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration.
14
The Natural Setting
Among the most dramatic impacts of human
activity on the Bay was the use of hydrau-
lic mining in the Sierra foothills during the
gold rush. These images show various ways
by which loose topsoil was washed away
to expose veins of precious metal. Flumes
and water cannon had a disastrous envi-
ronmental impact. The runoff altered the
depth of downstream waterways appreciably,
and marked a significant change to the San
Francisco Estuary ecosystem.
These images were taken at the
Malakoff Diggings along the
South Yuba River, in 1876 by
photographer Carleton E. Watkins.
Courtesy Hearst Mining Collection,
University of California, Berkeley.
The US Army Corps of Engineers seeks to
educate tourists and residents about the
impact of everyday decisions on the ecosys-
tem of the Bay. The Bay Model Visitor Center
in Sausalito is an interactive exhibit that
allows visitors to realize the importance of
environmental stewardship.
*' W.
Courtesy US Army Corps of Engineers.
15
CHAPTER 2
Indigenous Uses of California Waterways
A cursory glance at coastal population distribution and density shows that demography is
barely changed: today, most Californians, Americans, and world citizens live, work, and
play along coasts and waterways. This is not new, nor likely to soon change. As long as there
have been humans in California, they have been drawn to the sea. Long before European
immigration and settlement, the 300,000 or so indigenous persons — nearly one-third of all
Amerindians in the contiguous United States on the eve of the Columbian Encounter — call-
ing California home tended to congregate along the rivers, lakes, and coastline to maximize
transportation patterns, supplement their meager diets, and increase their martial capabilities.
While modest by modern standards, precontact California was the most densely populated
area north of Mexico. Favorable climate and abundant natural resources attracted indigenous
Americans, though few complex civilizations existed. Triblets of 50-300 persons were normal,
and more than twenty language groups in precolonial California further divided into scores of
dialects, suggesting that — despite a robust trade network and a shared approach to the suste-
nance and stewardship of the ecosystem — the various communities had little in common. 1
Human habitation of California traces to approximately 8,000 BCE, and from that
early period, persons who called the region home lived near the sea. Recent archaeological
evidence points to maritime activity in California dating back some 8,000 years. According
to the Clovis theory, humans migrated across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia, gradually
populating the Americas. Recent interpretations show these Stone Age peoples as mari-
time migrants. 2 Using driftwood rafts, dugout canoes, bidarkas, umiaks, and other craft,
Neolithic Americans quickly populated the Pacific coast from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. 3
Presumably knowledgeable in navigation and technology perhaps including the sail, these
individuals quickly recognized the prospects and perils of California's waterways. 4
The 20,000 or so who settled around San Francisco Bay — primarily members of the
Coast Miwok and Ohlone (meaning "Western peoples") tribes — were among the most adept
of all indigenous Californians at maritime endeavors. Employing local varieties of tule reeds,
these mariners built craft for travel on the inland waterways of the Bay where they fished,
gathered shellfish, or collected salt from marshlands ringing the estuary. Using construction
techniques common to global temperate regions from Lake Titicaca to the Nile River Delta,
Recent statistics claim 135 languages spoken by the nearly 500 different tribal groups. See Ramon A.
Gutierrez and Richard J. Orsi, eds., Contested Eden: California before the Gold Rush (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1988).
On Clovis culture in California, see E. James Dixon, Bones, Boats, and Bison: Archaeology and the First
Colonization of Western North America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999). Biological
evidence for alternatives to the Clovis theory can be found in Theodore Schurr, "Mitochondrial DNA and
the Peopling of the New World," American Scientist 88, no. 3 (May-June 2000): 246-53. See also Dennis
Stanford and Bruce Bradley, "Ocean Trails and Prairie Paths?: Thoughts about Clovis Origins," in The
First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonization of the New World, ed. Nina G. Jablonski (San Francisco:
California Academy of Sciences, 2002).
On the maritime migration route, see Tom Koppel, Lost World: Rewriting History — How New Science is
Tracing America's Ice Age Mariners (New York: Atria Books, 2003).
On indigenous uses of California waterways, see Terry L. Jones, ed., Essays on the Prehistory of Maritime
California, (Davis: Center for Archaeological Research, 1992).
16
Indigenous Uses of California Waterways
the craftsmen gathered tule reed stalks several feet long, bundled them on both ends, and
slathered the design with bitumen or other naturally occurring resins. From start to finish,
the entire process from harvesting the reeds to drying and bundling them took as little as
three days. More commonly, the process took a few weeks: green bulrush (Scirpus acutus)
was cut, usually with a sharpened clam shell, and spread out to dry for several days. Once
partially dried, the bulrush was formed into cigar-shaped bundles, their length depending
on the desired size of the craft. 5 The larger canoes reached 20 feet long and 6 feet across. The
bundles were tied together at the stern and bow to form a raised point, and a willow pole ran
the length of the canoe, adding longitudinal support. Relying more on the natural buoyancy
of the material than on a true displacement hull, the craft served its owner well, allowing his
search of abalone or other shellfish. Some craft featured rudimentary sails, allowing longer
voyages (some scholars have surmised that members of the Ohlone and Miwok tribes were
able to voyage to the Farallon Islands to collect seabird eggs), but most were used on the bay's
protected waters. An eighteenth-century observer, viewing them through the ethnocentric
lens of the day, described the "miserable straw canoes" thusly:
They were the most sorry contrivances for embarkation that I ever beheld. The
length of them was about ten feet, the breadth about three or four. They were
constructed of rushes and dried grass of a long, broad leaf, made up into rolls the
length of the canoe, the thickest in the middle, and regularly tapering to a point at
each end. They are so disposed that on their ends being secured and lashed together,
the vessel is formed, which being broadest in the middle, and coming to a point at
each extremity, goes with either end foremost. The rolls are laid and fastened so
close to each other that in calm weather and smooth water I believe them to be toler-
ably dry, but they appeared to be very ill-calculated to deal with wind and waves. 6
While not perfect — the reed craft could absorb up to two tons of water — the tule balsas
were efficient and reliable, allowing for navigation along the rivers, creeks, and flooded
areas of the Central Valley. The short-passage craft were for collecting mollusks, abalone,
and other shellfish. Communities from Alviso to Petaluma used these natural, abundant
resources and their detritus of sediments, marine shell, ash, and rock — activities still seen in
shell mounds found at various locations throughout the region. Measuring 9 to 183 meters in
diameter and 1 to 9 meters in height, these oval or oblong shell mounds date from approxi-
mately 3,500 years BCE, and served as sociopolitical and ceremonial centers. 7 Representing
the earliest human modification of the bay-shore landscape, shell mounds connected living
members of a tribe to their ancestors, and served as territorial symbols for local village
communities, providing a cultural map of the bay communities.
5 Fray Vicente Santa Maria, who accompanied the San Carlos when that ship became the first European
vessel to enter the Golden Gate in 1775, reported seeing two balsas, containing eight natives total. Quoted
in Joshua Paddison, ed.,^4 World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California before the Gold Rush
(Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1999), 41.
6 George Vancouver, Vancouver in California: 1792-1794 (Los Angeles: Glen Dawson, 1953).
7 In 1925, N. C. Nelson, an archaeologist working for the University of California at Berkeley identified
425 mounds remaining at various locales around the bay, and warned that hundreds of other sites had
already been destroyed. See N. C. Nelson, "Shell Mounds of the San Francisco Bay Region," University of
California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 1 (1909): 309-48. Twenty-five of these were
said to be in the confines of San Francisco County.
17
Indigenous Uses of California Waterways
Unlike mounds elsewhere in the Americas (such as the Ohio Valley) used exclusively as
burial sites, Bay Area shell mounds served a variety of purposes, and some interpreters believe
they offer a key to understanding the early inhabitants of the central California coast. Located
primarily at sites where freshwater streams emptied into the bay, they formed over centuries
by accretion, allowing for in-depth archaeological analysis into past uses of California's water-
ways. Shell-mound debris, for example, provides a unique window into the diet and overall
lifestyle of earlier civilizations. There is good evidence to suggest that coastal peoples used
these mounded sites as residential spaces, where they ate, slept, worked, and socialized, and
as ceremonial places, where they buried their dead and performed ritual activities. Recent
analysis of midden sites throughout the Bay Area prove the extensive relationship between
local inhabitants and the marine ecosystem: mounded villages, constructed on tidal mudflats,
kept residents "high and dry" while providing easy bay access. Used for sacred and domestic
purposes, from residences and graveyards to processing facilities for estuarine resources and
a communal dump, stratigraphic analysis of the shell mounds reveal that early Bay Area resi-
dents consumed mollusks in tremendous proportions, and that shellfish might have accounted
for as much as 30 percent of their daily caloric intake. 8 One estimate, which dates the most
ambitious period of shell-mound construction to the Late Holocene period (roughly 2,000
years ago), suggests that every inhabitant of these coastal communities consumed upward of
fifty mussels per day. Moreover, the mounds held tremendous symbolic significance, repre-
senting "food" and "home," among the two most powerful symbols in any cultural system.
Owing to a variety of factors — environmental degradation, population movements, reorgani-
zation of local communities, and subsistence changes — the mounds eventually transformed
from residential to ceremonial sites: the absence of mention by Spanish explorers that natives
occupied such locations is one clue to this change in use and function. As non-mounded Bay
Area villages became the norm, shell mounds retained their importance as burial sites and as
locations for occasional sociopolitical meetings. 9
Emeryville Shellmound
Among the most notable of the several hundred shellmounds located throughout the
greater Bay Area was one situated in Emeryville, along the Temescal Creek that enters
San Francisco Bay between Oakland and Berkeley. Formed over two millennia (from
500BCE to 1,700 CE) it stood over 60 feet (18m) high and ranged some 350 (110m) feet
long, dominating the landscape and towering above the handful of other midden sites
in the immediate area. Home to a large village, it was recognized as an archaeological
deposit from the first recorded settlements of the East Bay, and was the scene of one of
the first archaeological excavations in the United States. The site, like most others, served
several roles: it kept its residents above the tides of the bay, provided a vantage point
Kent Lightfoot and Edward M. Luby, "Late Holocene in the San Francisco Bay Area: Temporal Trends
in the Use and Abandonment of Shell Mounds in the East Bay," in Catalysts to Complexity: Late Holocene
Societies of the California Coast, ed. Jon M. Erlandson; and Terry L. Jones, Perspectives in California
Archaeology 6 (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California Los Angeles, 2002).
Edward M. Luby and Mark F. Gruber, "'The Dead Must be Fed': Symbolic Meanings of the Shellmounds
of the San Francisco Bay Area," Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9, no. 1 (1999): 95-108. See alsoKent
G. Lightfoot, "Cultural Construction of Coastal Landscapes: A Middle Holocene Perspective from San
Francisco Bay," in Archaeology of the California Coast during the Middle Holocene, ed. Jon Erlandson and
Mike Glasgow (Los Angeles: UCLA Institute of Archaeology, 1997).
18
Indigenous Uses of California Waterways
from which to hunt and fish, and was the site of internments that established genealo-
gies and territorial rights. Archaeological excavations conducted by the University of
California at Berkeley in 1924 revealed over 700 burials at the site.
The land had already been abandoned by the Ohlone residents when the Spanish
arrived in the 1770s. Granted to Luis Maria Peralta, it became the site of a rancho,
complete with stables and slaughterhouse. Following the Gold Rush, the site was subdivid-
ed and sold to successive owners. By the late nineteenth century, it housed an amusement
park (Shellmound Park), racetrack (California Jockey Club Racetrack), shooting range, and
dance pavilion. Over time, the mounds were razed as the region developed along various
tracks. In the process, parts of the shellmound were used as bay fill, as paving asphalt, or
as fertilizer for public gardens and parklands. As Emeryville modernized, the site became
home to heavy industry, including a steel mill, cannery, and paint manufacturer. Not
surprisingly, these activities led to high levels of soil and groundwater toxicity.
The development of mixed-use retail and residential space in the area during
the 1990s uncovered significant archaeological evidence, including numerous human
remains. Despite the efforts of preservationists, the region was developed with the
disturbed remains being moved to a location near their original discovery. A small
memorial park remains in memorial to the shellmound.
The Emeryville Shellmound is listed in the California Register of Historic Places, #335.
Far to the south, members of the Chumash tribe, located along the coast around Santa
Barbara and Ventura, constructed plank boats called tomols, renowned for their versatility
and seaworthiness. 10 Unique to the Americas and representative of the finest technological
and shipwrighting skills of indigenous Californians, tomols are split-planked canoes that
lack an internal frame, but utilize the natural properties of the redwood from which they
were routinely composed. In use for some two thousand years, the vessels, similar to seago-
ing canoes found in Polynesia, represent the pinnacle of indigenous California shipbuilding
technology. Nearly all of the Spanish diarists described these marvelous boats and were
unanimous in their praise. For example, in 1602, the Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino
visited the Chumash and observed:
A canoe came out to us with two Indian fishermen, who had a great quantity of
fish, rowing so swiftly they seemed to fly They came alongside without saying a
word to us and went twice around us with such speed that it seemed impossible.
After they had gone five Indians came out in another canoe, so well constructed
and built that since Noah's Ark a finer and lighter vessel with timbers better made
has not been seen. Four men rowed, with an old man in the center singing . . . and
the others responding to him. They moved with indescribable agility and swift-
ness, holding intercourse and commerce with the natives of the islands. 11
10 The Chumash lived in the Channel Islands and along the coast between Los Angeles and Point
Conception, west of Santa Barbara. Their neighbors, the Gabrielinos (or Tongva), also built tomols, but
those were clearly of Chumash origin. See Bruce Miller, Chumash: A Picture of Their World (Los Osos,
CA: Sand River Press, 1998).
11 Herbert Eugene Bolton, ed., The Diary of Sebastian Vizcaino, 1602-1603 (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1913).
19
Indigenous Uses of California Waterways
Almost two hundred years later, Spanish explorer Pedro Font, a member of the
DeAnza expedition, noted of the tomol:
They are very carefully made of several planks which they work with no other
tools but their shells and flints. They join them at the seams by sewing them with
very strong thread which they have and fit the joints with pitch Some of the
launches are decorated with little shells and all are painted red with hematite. In
shape they are like a little boat without ribs, ending in two points. In the middle
there is a somewhat elevated plank laid across from side to side to serve as a seat
and to preserve the convexity of the frame. Each launch is composed of some
twenty long and narrow pieces. I measured one and found it to be thirty-six
palms long and somewhat more than three palms high In each launch . . . ordi-
narily not more than two Indians ride one in each end. They carry some poles
about six feet, which end in blades, these being the oars with which they row
alternately . . . now on the one side and now on the other of the launch. 12
Collecting timbers that floated down the coast, or washed up on nearby beaches, the
Chumash knew that redwood swelled when wet but did not shrink to its original dimensions
when dry. This quality helped maintain a watertight fit, made more impermeable by caulking
with tar and pine pitch. Only the most select woods were chosen: those with curved grains
or knots were discarded, since these imperfections would cause cracking and leaking. Using
whalebone or deer antler wedges, the logs were split into planks, trimmed and leveled. Large
stone hammers were sometimes used to drive wooden wedges through particularly tough
pieces. In the absence of Iron Age technology, the planks were rubbed smooth with stone
or mollusk adzes or sharkskin sandpaper and sewn together using up to two miles of reeds,
animal sinew, and other cordage.
The craft was constructed according to a predetermined pattern: the longest and
straightest timber formed the bottom of the canoe; six or more planks were then bent
around this central plane. The craftsmen soaked the timbers in a clay-lined pit filled with
water heated to boiling with hot stones. After a few hours, the saturated wood was supple
enough to be manipulated and bent into shape. Each plank rested against the edge of its
neighbor, in a beveled construction far more hydrodynamic than clinker-built construc-
tion favored by Scandinavian seafarers. Tule reed thatch was pounded into the few
remaining gaps and drill holes (bone needles and drills commonly used) were caulked
with asphalt. A structural cross plank amidships reinforced the vessel and flourishes such
as splashboards and shell inlay finished the craft. All Chumash craft were painted with
rich, red ochre that announced the owner's wealth and standing; combined with the shell
inlay, the craft shimmered majestically in the sunlight. Swift, light, and as long as twenty-
five feet, the canoes accommodated up to two dozen persons and formed the basis of an
extensive maritime economy. 13
Not surprisingly, such boats were extraordinarily expensive. According to a Chumash
informant and source for much of what is known about the tomol, "the board canoe was the
12Frederick J. Teggart, ed., TheAnza Expedition of 1775-1776: Diary of Pedro Font (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1913).
13C. F. Richie and R. A. Hager, The Chumash Canoe: Structure and Hydrodynamics of a Model (San Diego: Coyote
Press, 1973).
20
Indigenous Uses of California Waterways
house of the sea ... it was more valuable than a land house and worth more money." 14 Because
of the vessel's complexity and the high status of the people associated with them, the tomol's
origins trace to the mid-first millennium CE, a period with evidence of the first stratification
of Chumash society. Several indications of this survive into the historic period. Of unique
character was the importance of swordfish, caught only at sea from tomols, especially after
about 1400 CE. Exploited not only for food, the capture of this large and dangerous prey also
accompanied an increase in the swordfisherman's status. His success, in turn, was reflected
in the ritual of the Swordfish Dancer, whose regalia included a headdress incorporating the
head and sword of the swordfish. According to another Chumash informant, "The Indians
used to say: 'All, whatever there is in the ocean is just like everything that is here on this
earth. . .we are the people of this land, the people of the ocean are the swordfish.'" 15 Font
noted the status conferred by craft ownership:
Among the men I saw a few with a little cape like a doublet reaching to the waist
and made of bear skin, and by this mark of distinction I learned that these were
the owners and masters of the launches When it [the canoe] arrived at the
shore, ten or twelve men approached the launch, took it on their shoulders still
loaded with the fish and carried it to the house of the master or captain of the
launch in each village they have fifteen to twenty canoes, and in each one they
were making not less than seven to ten new ones. 16
Men kneeling in the hull used double-bladed paddles to propel the craft. Highly
maneuverable and so light they could be carried by two persons, the vessels were beached
and dragged above the tideline when not in use. Frequently, canoemen operating these surf-
boats kept time and rhythm by coordinating their strokes through chants and canoe songs,
repeating a strategy of seafarers around the world from Polynesia to the British merchant
marine. The tomols were used for fishing, sealing, and whaling; for coastal commerce
(particularly for runs to the Channel Islands, a round trip of up to 130 miles, where main-
land Chumash acquired steatite, a stone used for soapstone bowls and figurines), and, some
suggest, long-distance trade. Ranging from 12 to 24 feet long, and with abeam of 3 to 4 feet,
the craft could accommodate a small fishing, trading, or war party. With room for up to
two tons of cargo, natives from Point Conception to Santa Monica Bay created an extensive
trading network to the outlying islands, moving between well-defined points illuminated
by fires. One prominent shipping lane traversed the narrowest point between Anacapa and
Hueneme: this route took advantage of the calmer waters offered by the Channel Islands,
which blocked seasonal winds and swells. Almost certainly, the boats launched during
morning hours, when winds were calm. For weeks on end, when the Santa Ana winds were
particularly daunting, the Chumash did not put to sea at all.
14 Travis Hudson, ed., Tomol: Chumash Watercraft as Described in the Ethnographic Notes of John P.
Harrington (Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press, 1978), 39.
15 Demorest Davenport, John R. Johnson, and Jan Timbrook, "Chumash and the Swordfish," Antiquity (June
1993): 258, 263-65.
16 Teggart, TheAnza Expedition of 1775.
21
Indigenous Uses of California Waterways
Another indicator of the tomol's importance was its surrounding secrecy. Among
the Chumash, the men who made and used the tomol belonged to the "brotherhood of the
tomol," one of the many Chumash craft guilds, and members of the brotherhood called
each other by kinship terms. The main activities of the brotherhood were building and
maintaining these craft, and fishing and trading with the Channel Islands. Some archae-
ologists and linguists point to shared connections between the Chumash and ancient
Polynesians — suggesting that the tomols were so expertly constructed that they were used
for trans-Pacific commerce — but these conjectures tend to devolve into heated debates that
obscure the true ingenuity and beauty of the vessel design. 17 One thing on which scholars
agree is the high level of craftsmanship associated with the Chumash craft, which repre-
sent the only planked boats built in North America prior to European contact. Yet for all
its importance, the tomol represents a dead end in the development of nautical technology.
There are no other offshore destinations and the coast is relatively free of natural harbors,
so the shipwright's art may simply have gone as far as was needed. Even so, it is strange that
there was no incentive to exploit the existing technology more fully for the development of
maritime trade among the islands and along the coast of southern California.
Elsewhere along the coast, indigenous persons used waterways for commercial,
martial, and recreational purposes. The discovery offish traps at several sites along the
mountainous, stream-rich northern coast revealed a sophisticated system of fisheries
management and harvesting from local members of the Yuki, Tolowa, Karok, Hoopa,
Mattole, and Wailaki tribes netting salmon or spearing trout during their annual runs. On
a river stand in the span of a few months, an indigenous family easily caught, dried, and
stored enough fish for a year. To the peoples of the Pacific Northwest, salmon represented
the alpha and the omega of their existence, and assumed a prominence equal to corn for the
eastern tribes and bison for the Plains Indians. They augmented their considerable catch
with large quantities of cod, halibut, shellfish, and, on occasion, the eulachon, or candle-
fish, a trade item of high quality. Natives netted candlefish and rendered them for oil used
as food dressing, or dried for later use as an illuminant. Most of their travel was on rivers
or along the seacoast where intrepid hunters sought sea otter, seal, and whales from large
dugout canoes, some of which accommodated fifty oarsmen and held three tons of cargo.
Here, vessel construction varied but most prominently featured dugout construction.
Yoruk, Wiyot, and other coastal peoples used boatbuilding techniques commonly associat-
ed with the Haida of the Pacific Northwest. Using redwood logs felled by storm or lightning
strike, the villagers floated them downstream to a village beach. Here, craftsmen hollowed
the trunk out with stone tools or beaver-tooth chisels. The sides were stretched by steam-
ing the trunk, allowing them to become both more hydrodynamic and commodious. While
vessels could be broadened by steam-stretching techniques, they were limited in length by
the size of the tree from which they were constructed. The longest dugout canoe, a sixty-
four-foot behemoth outfitted with sail and capable of accommodating a crew of thirty,
was constructed by the Haida of British Columbia, but it is not beyond reason that craft
17 Terry Jones and Kathryn Klar, "Diffusionism Reconsidered: Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence for
Prehistoric Polynesian Contact with Southern California," American Antiquity 70, no. 3 (2005): 457-84.
See also Atholl Anderson, "Polynesian Seafaring and American Horizons: A Response to Jones and
Klar," American Antiquity 71, no. 4 (2006): 759-63.
22
Indigenous Uses of California Waterways
of similar dimensions were built further south along the Pacific coast. 18 Porno and Miwok
people, like the Ohlone to the south, thrived on shellfishing. Like their southern brethren,
the peoples of the Northern California coast relied on waterways as transportation plat-
forms, sources of foodstuffs, sites of conflict, and virtually every other imaginable use.
These myriad uses of California's waterways remained a hallmark for centuries, as
evidenced by the various ways in which European and American mariners themselves
viewed and utilized the California seascape. The next chapter discusses how Euro-
American mariners interpreted maritime California, and what this meant for the region and
its inhabitants.
18 A replica of this craft is on display at New York City's Museum of Natural History. Most dugout canoes
ranged from 20 to 40 feet long and from 5 to 10 feet wide.
23
Indigenous Uses of California Waterways
A trio of tule reed vessel representations.
At top, a well-known drawing made
by Louis Choris in 1816 depicts an
indigenous family traversing the bay.
A modern depiction that is part of the
murals featured at San Francisco's
Rincon Building and attributed to
Anton Refregier is seen at center. Below,
a contemporary version of a tule reed
vessel, complete with sail, is on display at
the Peruvian Maritime Museum, Lima.
San Francisco Maritime National Historical
Park, A7.19, 417.
* Kir 4) '
V
"*^H
Photo courtesy of Paul Judge.
■^^ri
— —
Author's photo.
The Emeryville Shellmound, its southern
wall shown here, is among the most
notable examples of this once-prominent
Bay Area feature. Over 400 ringed the
Bay, with some reaching over 500 feet in
diameter. Photographers W. E. Schenck
and L. L. Loud chronicled its destruction
in 1924, when the structure was leveled to
make room for a paint factory.
Courtesy University of California, Berkeley.
Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.
15-7792.
24
Indigenous Uses of California Waterways
Chumash artisans stand proudly beside
their latest creation in the first photograph.
Completed in 1912 under the direction
of Fernando Librado for J.P. Harrington, the
craft was built using traditional tools and
methods. The plank canoes were fastened by
hemp cordage, and coated with tar or bitu-
men to be made watertight.
Below, a half model of a traditional
plank canoe is on display at the Santa
Barbara Museum of Natural History.
Traditional indigenous boatbuilding
along the North Pacific coast included
dugout canoes, three examples of which
are depicted here. In the first, a large
party of Alaskan natives are transported
in style via a large version, while below, a
Yurok native woman paddles a double-
ender in solitude on California's Klamath
River, as local youth return from a
successful fishing venture.
Courtesy Huntington Collection,
Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
Courtesy Alaska State Library Historical
Collections. Winter and Pond Collection.
ASL-P87-1348.
Courtesy Roberts Photograph Collection, RS Series. Humboldt State University.
25
CHAPTER 3
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
The first nonindigenous persons to encounter maritime California were Spanish conquis-
tadores pushing north from their Mexican fiefdoms during the sixteenth century. Spain's
concern with the maritime aspects of California can be traced to early in her colonial
history. For much of the first two centuries of that period, however, the Iberian monarchs
focused their attention on Baja California, rarely paying any but passing attention to the
region now encompassing the state of California. The little import she did attach to the
region was often as an outpost or adjunct to her other imperial concerns: to thwart north-
ern interlopers, or perhaps to establish a ship repair facility and "safe harbor" for ships en
route between Manila and Mexico.
Galleons laden with New World gold and silver made their way from American Pacific
ports such as Acapulco and Zihuatanejo destined for Manila. There, they off-loaded their
cargo in return for spices, silks, and other commodities, ushering in a global economy the
likes of which had rarely been seen previously 1 Mexican silver was one of the few commod-
ities that Chinese merchants accepted as exchange for their goods, and from 1565 — the date
of a voyage by Andres de Urdaneta inaugurating the trade — represented the farthest and
richest sea trade that the world had ever known, with the potential of up to 1,000 percent
profit on every voyage. Always fearful of pirates and other predators, the Spanish employed
convoy systems utilizing armed escorts to protect the treasure fleet; the likelihood of storms
and other natural disasters loomed large, so prudent mariners often coordinated their sail-
ing schedules around known storm seasons. 2 Even with these precau tions, the lengthy
voyage taxed even veteran crews, so mariners always sought safe ports to gather fresh
water, make repairs, or otherwise protect themselves from the ravages of the sea. These
determinants forced the Spanish crown to sponsor surveying expeditions of the northern
California coast in the hope of finding suitable harbors for returning Manila galleons. 3
In 1532, fresh off his conquest of the Aztec, Hernan Cortes sent his kinsman, Diego
Hurtado de Mendoza, on a "voyage of discovery" to extend the Spanish imperial holdings
north and west of what was then their current claims. Mendoza got as far as 27° north,
edging into the Gulf of California before a mutinous crew forced him to send one of the
ships back; of his own vessel, which remained in the waters of the Sea of Cortes, nothing but
vague rumor was ever heard again. Fortuno Ximenes, pilot of an expedition sent to search
for Mendoza, was equally unlucky: anchoring in a small bay near 23° north, Ximenes was
the first Spaniard to land in Baja California, where he and twenty of his men were promptly
killed by natives. Survivors returned to Cortes, reporting the discovery of an island,
See Dennis O. Flynn, ed., European Entry into the Pacific: Spain and the Manila Galleons
(Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2001).
See Carla Rahn Phillips, Six Galleons for the King of Spain: Imperial Defense in the Early Seventeenth Century
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). See also James A. Lewis, The Spanish Convoy of
1 750: Heaven's Hammer and International Diplomacy (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009).
See Carla Rahn Phillips, The Treasure of the San Jose: Death at Sea in the War of the Spanish Succession
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
26
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
abounding in pearls. 4 This fueled the already erroneous belief that the region was indeed the
land described by Montalva in Las Sergas de Esplandiin, where one could find black women
with golden arms and riches of unimaginable quantities.
Buoyed by these reports, Cortes himself set out to investigate the claims, and on May
5, 1535, he entered a bay that many believe to be near present-day La Paz, which he called
"Santa Cruz." Convinced that he had found the mythical island of California, he stayed in
this desolate land for more than a year, cursed by disgruntled and mutinous soldiers longing
to return to Mexico. In 1539, the humbled Cortes sent Francisco de Ulloa north with three
vessels to survey the coast. Rounding Cabo San Lucas, Ulloa reached the head of the Sea of
Cortes (28° north), proving that Baja California was not, as many had thought, an island but
a peninsula. 5 The following year, sailing out of Acapulco, Hernando de Alarcon led a two-
ship supply group up to the head of the Gulf of California, sailing up the Colorado River for
some 270 miles. 6
In June 1542, another expedition — also primarily motivated by greed — ventured north
from Mexico. This was an attempt to locate the fabulously wealthy "Seven Cities of Cibola,"
believed to lie somewhere on the Pacific coast beyond New Spain, and to ascertain a route
connecting the North Pacific to the North Atlantic. The fabled "Straits of Anian" — like the
equally sought after but equally disappointing Northwest Passage — were among the most
important motivations for exploring the California coast. In support of these goals, Viceroy
of New Spain Don Antonio de Mendoza sent Portuguese explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo
to "examine the western side of California as far northward as possible, seeking particularly
rich countries and passages leading towards the Atlantic." 7 With a commission from Governor
of Guatemala Pedro de Alvarado, Cabrillo — who had fought alongside Cortes — sailed north
from the port of Navidad, near present-day Manzanillo, on June 27, 1542, thereby undertaking
the first European exploration of the western coast of what would become the United States.
Accompanying Cabrillo were a crew of sailors, soldiers, Indians, merchants, a priest, livestock
and provisions for two years, and probably black slaves. Three ships, including the flagship San
Salvador, built by Cabrillo himself, were under his command. 8
Slowed by adverse winds, Cabrillo reached the "very good enclosed port" that is now
called San Diego Bay, on September 28, 1542, naming it "San Miguel." He probably anchored
his flagship at Ballast Point on Point Loma's east shore, there transferring his command to
La Victoria. Departing six days later, he sailed northward exploring the uncharted coast of
California and encountered the Santa Barbara Channel. Cabrillo visited many of the islands
4 Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, eds., Lands of Promise and Despair: Chronicles of Early
California, 1535-1846 (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2001).
5 On Ximenes, see Harold Weight, Lost Ship of the Desert: A Legend of the Southwest (Twenty-Nine Palms,
CA: Calico Press, 1959). The best treatment on maritime Spain can be found in Pablo E. Perez-Mallaina,
Spain's Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleet in the Sixteenth Century (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1998). See also W. Michael Mathes, "Francisco de Ortega's Third Voyage to the
Gulf of California: Fantasy or Historical Reality?" Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 35,
no. 4 (1999): 16-25.
6 A thorough overview of the region can be found in Edward Vernon, A Maritime History of Baja California
(Santa Barbara, CA: Viejo Press, 2009). On Ulloa, see Harry Kelsey, "La Trinidad: Ulloa's Ship of
Discovery," Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 35, no. 4 (1999): 6-15.
7 Federal Writer's Project, California: A Guide to the Golden State (Washington, DC: Works Progress
Administration, 1939), 42.
8 John Kessel, Spain in the Southwest: A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and
California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003).
27
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
along the coast, including the three largest of the Santa Barbara group: Santa Cruz, Catalina,
and San Clemente. His voyage, while ultimately failing in its stated objective, added much
to Spain's knowledge of the geography of the region and subsequently allowed Spain to
proceed with the task of colonizing their expanded empire.
The expedition reached San Pedro on October 6, and sailed into Santa Monica Bay
three days later. Continuing north, the party subsequently reached San Buenaventura
(October 10), Santa Barbara (October 13), and Point Conception (Cabo Galera) (October
17). The expedition eventually reached Point Reyes (Cabo de los Reyes) but sailed right
past the entrance to the Golden Gate, seeing and naming the Farallon Islands before
running offshore, perhaps reaching as far north as Oregon. 9 Because of adverse winds
Cabrillo turned back, harboring at San Miguel Island, and did not progress beyond Santa
Maria until November 11. A favorable wind later that day allowed them to reach the
"Sierra de San Martin," probably Cape San Martin and the Santa Lucia Mountains in
southern Monterey County. Struck by a storm and blown out to sea, the two vessels sepa-
rated and did not rejoin until October 15, probably near Ano Nuevo north of Santa Cruz.
The next day they drifted southward, discovering "Cabo de Pinos" (Point Pinos) and "la
Bahia de los Pinos" (Bay of Pines), today known as Monterey Bay. High winds prevented
Cabrillo from sending a search party ashore, and on October 18,the expedition turned
south, passing snowcapped mountains (the Santa Lucias). By November 23, they returned
to their harbor — which Cabrillo named "La Posesion" — at San Miguel Island, where they
remained for nearly three months. 10 Cabrillo died at San Miguel on January 3, 1543, from
complications of a broken bone incurred from a fall during a brief skirmish with natives
two weeks earlier. On February 18, 1543, under the command of Bartolome Ferrelo, the
expedition again turned north and with favorable winds neared Cape Mendocino on
February 26. The cape, named "Cabo de Fortunas" (Cape of Perils, or, Stormy Cape), lived
up to its name: on March 1, the voyagers reached the present-day border of California and
Oregon, but a severe storm blew the expedition back to San Miguel Island. From there, the
expedition turned south, and returned to Navidad on April 14, 1543, where Ferrelo report-
ed that the lands north of Mexico "contain neither wealthy nations nor navigable passage
between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans." 11
These reports did much to dampen Spanish hopes of finding wealth, eastward-lead-
ing passages, or suitable harbors for returning galleons along the California coast. Further
attempts were tabled until 1584, when Francisco Gali made landfall near Cape Mendocino,
in a survey that rekindled interest in the region. Gali's own voyage was largely a response
to increased English interest in the region. During his three-year (1579-1582) circumnavi-
gation of the globe, swashbuckler-turned-nobleman Francis Drake took time out from
plundering Spanish treasure ships to explore the California coast, searching for the Pacific
9 The reasons for this are partially explained in H. R. Raup, "The Delayed Discovery of San Francisco Bay,"
California Historical Society Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1948): 289-96. See also Frank M. Stanger and Alan K.
Brown, Who Discovered the Golden Gate? (San Mateo, CA: San Mateo Historical Society, 1969).
10 On Cabrillo and his expeditions, consult Harry Kelsey,/oao Rodrigues Cabrilho (San Marino: Huntington
Library Press, 1986).
11 Robert Greenhow, History of Oregon and California and the Other Territories on the North-West Coast of
North America (Boston: Freeman and Bowles, 1847), 63.
28
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
outlet to the Northwest passage. 12 On June 17, 1579, noting that "it having pleased God to
send him into a fair and good bay, with a good wind to enter the same," Drake put in at a bay
now bearing his name, a stone's throw north of the entrance to San Francisco Bay. Needing
repairs to his flagship Golden Hinde and towing a captured Spanish bark, Drake and his
associates made a quick reconnaissance of the region, finding "a convenient and fit harbor,
fit for the life of man" with natives "without guile or treachery." 13 Claiming the territory —
which he named "Nova Albion," in honor of the white cliffs that reminded him of Dover —
for the monarchs of England, Drake's five-week sojourn near Point Reyes ushered in a new
wave of interest in California's coast, of which Gali's survey was only the most obvious
manifestation. His landing site also ushered in a tremendous amount of historical contro-
versy as amateur and professional historians place the event at more than two dozen locales
between Monterey and Vancouver. 14
In 1592, fifty years after Cabrillo scouted the coast and just one hundred years after
Columbus first spied the New World, Sebastian Rodriguez Cermefio was charged with
examining the California coast "in search of those ports in which galleons might take
refuge." 15 Cermeno's voyage was likely the result of howls of protest emanating from
Spanish merchants operating on both ends of the transpacific route: just years earlier, the
English privateer Thomas Cavendish, commanding Desire, captured the richest galleon
ever dispatched from the Philippines, Santa Ana, taking thousands of dollars' worth of
spices and other valuable commodities in an engagement off Cabo San Lucas. Ordered to
"chart all harbors homeward" so that a port could be established to refit and repair the
galleons before they ran the gauntlet of English pirates, Cermeno reconnoitered much of
the northern California coast. Returning from Manila to Acapulco in his 200-ton galleon
San Agustin, Cermeno painstakingly scoured the coast for suitable anchorage. 16
The return trip from the Philippines to New Spain took four months, at a minimum.
Departing Manila, the crew charted a course to 40° north latitude, catching the Kuroshio
Current that carried them toward Alta California to Acapulco. Encountering first Trinity Bay,
sixty-five miles south of the California-Oregon border, Cermeno then charted the Northern
California coastline, noting a promising cove at a place he called "Bahia de San Francisco,"
south of Cape Mendocino. Many speculate that this was the same location earlier utilized by
Drake and Golden Hinde — San Agustin dropped anchor here on November 6, 1595. 17
Cermeno's assessment may have been wrong, as at this point a series of storms drove
12 Drake had long been a thorn in the sides of Spanish officials. Earlier in the year, he had taken six tons
of specie from the galleon Nuestra Sehorade Concepcion. The commander of the ill-fated vessel tried to
outrun the Englishman, but a fouled bottom slowed his escape. On Drake, see John Cummins, Francis
Drake: The Lives of a Hero (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996); and Harry Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake: The
Queen's Pirate (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
13 Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, 1577-1580 (Vancouver: Douglas and Mclntyre, 2004).
14 See Raymond Aker and Edward Von der Porten, Discovering Francis Drake's California Harbor (Palo Alto:
Drake Navigators Guild, 2000).
15 Federal Writer's Project, California: A Guide to the Golden State, 43.
16 Land-Sea Discovery Group, "The Wreck of the San Agustin," http://www.e-adventure.net/sea/shipwrecks/
sanagustin.html.
17 In all likelihood, this is what today is known as Drake's Bay.
29
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
his vessel onto the shoals, battering it to pieces. 18 Not surprisingly, this was the last time
a treasure-laden ship went on a voyage of exploration. Subsisting on acorns and fish
supplied by local members of the Miwok tribe, Cermeno salvaged a launch — christened
San Buenaventura — from the wreckage of San Agustin. He and the surviving crew members
then sailed southward along the coast in the open boat, missing the entrance of the Golden
Gate but making note of the port of Monterey, which he named "San Pedro Bay." That port,
which would play a pivotal role in Spanish California, was the next scene of Iberian colonial
exploration. 19
In 1596, Sebastian Vizcaino explored the eastern shore of Baja California and, like his
predecessors, noted the rich pearl fishery extant there. His attempts to learn more about the
Pacific coast were thwarted, however, leading to a second expedition in 1602. In May that
year, sailing with "three ships well officered," Vizcaino explored the coast a second time,
sailing from Cabo San Lucas as far north as Cape Mendocino. 20 The first port he reached,
"the best in all the South Sea," he named in honor of his flagship San Diego, and a shore party
landed on November 10 to assess the region. 21 Continuing methodically up the coast, in a
voyage lasting the better part of a year, Vizcaino encountered many of the same places as
earlier explorers, and several new ones. Sailing sixty years after Cabrillo, he visited many of
the places his predecessor previously charted — San Diego, Santa Catalina, Santa Barbara,
Point Conception, Point Reyes — but, like the earlier explorer, he too missed the Golden
Gate. Most notably, Vizcaino entered the port of Monterey, becoming the first European to
set foot on its shores. Landing in December 1602, Vizcaino named the territory in honor of
the man who dispatched the expedition, Viceroy of Mexico Don Gaspar de Ziiniga Acevedo,
Count of Monte Rey.
Vizcaino was confident that the port could accommodate the largest Manila galle-
ons and earnestly recommended it as a site fit for settlement and colonization, stating that
he found "a harbor that is all that can be desired as a station for the Manila ships ... it is a
port sheltered from all winds, thickly settled with people, with great supplies of wood and
water ... it has many pines for masts and yards, and live oaks and white oaks, and water in
great quantity, all near the shore" 22 Despite these accolades and Vizcaino's recommendation,
this step was not taken for another 175 years. Nonetheless, from that time on, the port was
touted as one of the jewels of the Pacific, representing the seat of Spanish colonial power in
Alta California. In later years, it became a center of the bustling hide-and-tallow trade that
dominated the California economy in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
While Drake and the English might have represented the most tenacious and terrifying
threat to Spanish colonial interests, they were not the only challenge to Spanish suzerainty
18 This was the first recorded wreck in California's history. For a firsthand account of the wreck and subse-
quent voyage on San Buenaventura, see Donald C. Cutter, ed., The California Coast: A Bilingual Edition of
Documents from the Sutro Collection (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969).
19 Richard F. Pourade, Time of the Bells (San Diego: Union Tribune Publishing Company, 1972).
20 The vessels were San Diego, San Tomas, and Tres Reyes. W. Michael Mathes, Vizcaino and Spanish
Exploration in the Pacific Ocean, 1580-1630 (San Francisco: San Francisco Historical Society, 1968).
21 Federal Writer's Project, California: A Guide to the Golden State, 43.
22 Many surmise that Vizcaino was overly generous in his praise and estimation, suggesting that he embellished
his reports so that the expedition not be deemed a failure. This might explain why subsequent Spanish
explorers had so difficult a time locating the port that Vizcaino had so glowingly documented. See James J.
Rawls and Walter Bean, California: An Interpretative History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), 14-17.
30
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
in Northern California. Other nations, eager to find a maritime passage through the conti-
nent, to settle the region in their own right, or to locate mineral or other sources of wealth,
were real threats. Among the most intimidating was Imperial Russia. For years, promyshlen-
niki (fur traders) attached to the houses of Stroganoff and other interests, probed the north-
ern reaches of Spanish California. Vitus Bering had crossed the Sea bearing his name in
1734, planting the Russian standard in Alaska later that year, and established a Muscovite
presence in North America that remained for the better part of a century. After systemati-
cally exhausting the populations of fur-bearing animals in the region, the Russians made
their way down the Pacific coast, contracting with local indigenous persons working under
near slave conditions to feed the insatiable fur appetite of Chinese and European custom-
ers. 23 The increased encroachment on unsettled Spanish claims did not go unnoticed by the
Iberian crown, which sought to undertake a new phase of settlement and colonization to
thwart the Russian threat (Russian interests would get as far south as Fort Ross, just sixty
miles north of San Francisco, establishing a shipbuilding and repair facility, the archaeologi-
cal remnants of which can still be seen today). 24 Now, rather than merely reconnoitering the
coastline for suitable galleon harbors, the Spanish actively encouraged long-term settlement
and development of their northern frontier.
In addition to establishing communities to thwart rival imperial claims in the region,
the Spanish crown was likewise interested in evangelizing those whom they encountered.
Knowing that Alta California contained large numbers of indigenous persons, but also aware
that there were few of the concentrations found in the urban centers of Mexico, Spanish
authorities relied on a tried-and-true solution to this perceived problem. Rather than send-
ing missionaries out to the scattered indigenous communities, the natives were brought
together in common locales to be educated, Christianized, and perhaps most important,
put to work. The mission system, conceived by high-ranking church and state officials, first
implemented in Sonora in the sixteenth century, and most commonly associated with Father
Junipero Serra, remains a hotly debated and contested aspect of Spanish colonial history. 25
With these dual motivations in mind — establishing bulkheads against competing
claimants and creating missions — Governor of Baja California Gaspar de Portola, a noble-
man with a distinguished military record, was ordered by his home government to "send an
23 Adele Ogden, "Russian Sea-Otter and Seal Hunting on the California Coast, 1803-1841," in The Russians
in California (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1933). On the Russian American Company
and its activities in California, consult James R. Gibson, Imperial Russia in Frontier America, (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1976). See also Hector Chevigny, Russian America: The Great Alaskan Venture,
1741-1867(New York: Viking Press, 1965); and IlyaVinkovetsky, Russian America: An Overseas Colony of a
Continental Empire, 1804-1867 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
Excellent first-person accounts can be found in Richard Pierce, The Russian-American Company:
Correspondence of the Governors (Fairbanks, AK: Limestone Press, 1984); P. A. Tikhemenev, A History of
the Russian-American Company (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977); and Basil Dmytryshyn
and E. A. P. Crownhart- Vaughn, eds., Colonial Russian America: Kyrill T. Khlebnikov's Reports, 1817-1832
(Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1976).
24 On Fort Ross, see James Allan, "Fort Ross Cove: Historical and Archaeological Research to Identify the
Remains of California's First Shipyard" (master's thesis, East Carolina University, 1996). See also James
M. Allan, "Forge and Falseworks: An Archaeological Investigation of the Russian-American Company's
Industrial Complex at Colony Ross" (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2001).
25 See, for example, H. Henrietta Stockel, Salvation through Slavery: Chiricahua Apaches and Priests on the
Spanish Colonial Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008); and Ramon A. Gutierrez,
When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846
(Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).
31
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
expedition by sea to rediscover the people and bays of San Diego and Monterey." 26 In January
1769, a trio of ships departed from various Mexican ports in a staggered schedule: San Carlos
departed La Paz on January 9; two days later, San Antonio departed from San Lucas, and
soon thereafter, San Jose left from Loreto, which was to be the base of military and pastoral
operations for the expedition. It was agreed that an overland expedition, composed of two
columns, one of which was led by Portola and Serra, should be dispatched as an adjunct to
these maritime forays. The Portola column left Loreto on May 15, nearly two months after
the first overland company — headed by Captain Fernando de Rivera y Moncada and accom-
panied by Padre Juan Crespi (who, like Serra, was a native of the island of Majorca) — marched
north from Santa Maria in Baja California. An earlier overland expedition, led by Father
Marcos across the Sonoran desert in 1539, proved that San Diego Bay could be reached in
such a manner.
The journey up the Pacific coast of Baja California was as slow and arduous as had been
Cabrillo's two centuries earlier. Facing adverse winds and sailing into a prevailing current,
the first ship to arrive, San Antonio under Captain Juan Perez, did not reach San Diego Bay
until April 11. San Carlos was in even worse shape: by the time that ship arrived on April 29,
the crew was so ravaged by scurvy that they could not launch their boats. 27 The overland trek
was scarcely any better: the first detachment arrived on May 15 and the parched Portola/
Serra contingent arrived six weeks later. By this time, only half of the original three hundred
members survived, and many more languished and died awaiting supplies and reinforce-
ments from Baja California. After some much needed rest, the mission of San Diego was
established on July 16, 1769, marking the first of twenty-one establishments, each located
along the coast one day's ride from the next. Legend has it that the abundant wildflowers now
seen along the California coast — particularly the orange poppy and yellow mustard — were
planted by itinerant friars as a sort of roadmap for their followers: recognizing their reliance
on the coast, only one of the original twenty-one missions (Nuestra Senora de la Soledad) was
located more than thirty miles inland from that lifeline.
In September, after establishing a presidio to protect the nascent settlement at San
Diego, Portola pushed on, but missed his appointed rendezvous with the relief ship San Jose
at Monterey 28 Believing that this barely adequate and windswept port could not possibly be
the spacious anchorage that Vizcaino had described, he continued his search for the "harbor
protected from all winds," carrying a dozen of his scurvy-stricken men on improvised litters.
(In fact, the mission and settlement at Monterey would not be established until June 3, 1770.)
Venturing farther north along the coast, the expedition strove to reach the Punta de los Reyes
(an estuary had been charted here in 1734 by Admiral Cabrera Bueno on his return voyage
from Manila).
On October 31, Portola sent a hunting party ahead; a few days later, they crested
a mountain in the Coast Range and encountered "some immense arms of the sea which
26 Mark Allan, "'So Extended and Painful a Voyage': A Narrative of the 1769 Journey of the San Carlos to San
Diego Bay," Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 36, no. 1 (2000): 4-13.
27 "Pedro Font and Miguel Costanso: Two Early Letters from San Diego in 1769," Journal of San Diego History
(Spring 1975), http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/75spring/fages.htm. See also Harlan Hague, The
Road to California: The Search for a Southern Overland Route, 1540-1848 (Glendale, CA: The Arthur H.
Clark Company, 1978).
28 Zoeth Eldredge, The March of Portola and the Discovery of San Francisco Bay (San Francisco: Kessenger
Publishing, 1909).
32
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
penetrate into the mainland in an extraordinary fashion, as far as the eye could see, and
which would have made it necessary to take a long, circuitous detour." 29 What Sergeant Jose
Ortega saw on this reconnaissance and described by Father Juan Crespi as "big enough to
offer anchorages to all the navies of Spain and all the armadas of Europe," were the south-
ern reaches of San Francisco Bay. 30 Long hidden from mariners (three Spanish expedi-
tions between 1542 and 1602 had sailed past the entrance to the harbor, as had Drake and
unknown others), the harbor that many had passed but none had entered was finally revealed
to the Spanish by an overland expedition.
As the first non-Indians to set foot in the region and explore its surroundings, the
Portola expedition was greeted with apprehension by local Ohlone tribesmen. The party
grew depressed by the bay, seeing it as an obstacle to reaching the relief ship they still
sought and which — from the signs of the Indians — they assumed must be anchored in an
estuary above the bay. In reality, San Jose had wrecked months before off Baja California,
and there was no ship within one thousand miles. When their supplies ran low, the deject-
ed party retreated toward San Diego, leaving in their wake "la Boca del Puerto" (mouth of
the port).
In 1772, Lieutenant Pedro Fages and Crespi made a more extended exploration of the
eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, proceeding as far north as the San Joaquin-Sacramento
Delta. 31 As a record of this expedition we have a map, made from the diary and observations
of Crespi, identifying for the first time many of the geographical features of the bay, includ-
ing its islands, its environs, and its outlet through the straits into the Pacific Ocean. 32 When
the Spaniards met the Ohlone on the Fremont plain, south of Alameda Creek, Fages painted a
scene reminiscent of early colonial New England:
We saw many friendly, good-humored heathens to whom we made a present
of some strings of beads, and they responded with feathers and geese stuffed
with grass, which they avail themselves of to take countless numbers of these
birds We came to a place near the salt flats where there was a great willow
thicket on a slough adjoining the estuary. . . . Here are found villages, whose
inhabitants . . . without us asking, told us that the land flooded where we
were, that on the other side the land shows itself to be rich, and that one can
work most of these plains without iron. . . . There were five villages, each with
six houses of spherical shape, with considerable numbers of heathens living
in them. 33
Fages got as far as the Carquinez Straits of San Pablo Bay, while another expedition, led
by Captain Fernando Javier Rivera y Moncada, the military governor of California, marched
29 Cited in K. Maldetto, The Discovery of San Francisco Bay: (1542-1769),
http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Discovery_of_San_Francisco_Bay_http://www.foundsf.org/
index.php?title=The_Discovery_of_San_Francisco_Bay.
30 Clyde F. Trudell, "Ayala and the San Carlos," Pacific Historian 22, no. 4 (Winter 1978): 371-78.
31 As late as 1773, there were fewer than 100 Spanish residents in all of Alta California. The non-Indian popu-
lation of the region had not passed 2,000 as late as 1800.
32 See Theodore E. Treutlein, San Francisco Bay: Discovery and Colonization, 1769-1776
(San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1968).
33 Zoeth Skinner Eldredge, The Beginnings of San Francisco from the Expedition of Anza, 1774 to the City
Charter of April 15, 1850, with Biographical and Other Notes (New York: John C. Rankin Company, 1912).
33
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
north from the peninsula to Point Lobos. Soon, a small vessel would sail through the Golden
Gate, ushering in a period of maritime activity that would define San Francisco for the rest of
its history.
On March 16, 1775, a fleet of four vessels prepared to sail from San Bias. San Antonio was
bound for San Diego with supplies for the community there, while the flagship frigate Santiago,
commanded by Captain Bruno Heceta, and Sonora, commanded by Lieutenant Juan Manuel
de Ayala, were to explore the Northwest coast. The final ship, the 193-ton packet-boat San
Carlos, a small craft of just 58 feet and a crew of thirty (plus a chaplain, Vicente Santa Maria),
was commanded by Captain Manuel Manrique and ordered to survey the recently discovered
San Francisco Bay 34 Before they could sail, distress signals from San Carlos brought a boat
from the flagship: it returned with news that Manrique had gone insane and was threaten-
ing his crew with a gun. After putting the deranged captain ashore, the thirty-year-old Ayala
assumed command, but the drama was not over; while straightening up his cabin, removing
loaded firearms his predecessor had left about, a musket discharged, the ball lodging itself in
the new captain's foot. It took the tiny craft 100 days to reach Monterey, where they filled their
water casks and made for the final leg of their journey, departing for San Francisco on July 27. A
little more than a week later, on August 2, they arrived at the Golden Gate, and Ayala dispatched
first mate Jose Canizares and a contingent of ten sailors in a longboat to assay the situation,
probe the entrance, and find a suitable anchorage for the ship. When this group did not return,
San Carlos attempted to enter the bay, but an ebb tide and the setting sun prevented them from
making much headway 35
San Carlos, sometimes known as the "Mayflower of the West," was built in 1767 and
launched from the Rio Santiago as Toison de Oro, or Golden Fleece. 36 Given her role in San
Francisco's history, this name could not have been more foretelling. The next morning, she
ghosted through the entrance, anchoring off Sausalito (a place they named for the small
band of willow trees, or sauzalito, seen there), near present-day Tiburon, becoming the first
European ship to sail into San Francisco Bay. Recognizing the unprotected location of their
anchorage, Ayala moved the ship to Hospital Cove (since renamed Ayala Cove) on what they
called "Isla de Nuestra Sonora de Los Angeles" (Angel Island).
The tiny ship was tasked with a monumental responsibility: survey the waters of San
Francisco Bay and determine if the region was capable of sustaining a settlement large
enough to thwart rival claimants. In the following weeks, a pair of intrepid pilots, Jose
Canizares and Juan Batista Aguirre, thoroughly charted the entire bay, locating nearly five
hundred soundings on a chart in a remarkable forty-four-day period of activity. The crew
made prescient observations and gave names to prominent landmarks to assist future mari-
ners (some of those which remain include Angel Island, Alcatraz [alcaltraces] — so named
due to the large numbers of pelicans roosting there — and Yerba Buena Island), exploring
a number of rivers to at least the juncture of the San Joaquin (determining that neither the
34 Both Ayala and Manrique had been trained in navigation, chart making, and coastal surveying.
35 Ayala reported the challenge of navigating the narrow harbor entrance: "At the entranceway to this harbor,
we could make no more than half a knot . . . inside but a league, and a mile from shore, the winds were still."
Quoted in John Galvin, ed., The First Spanish Entry into San Francisco Bay, 1775
(San Francisco: John Howell Press, 1971).
36 Cited in Edward O'Day, "The Founding of San Francisco," ca. 1926,
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/founding.html.
34
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
Petaluma nor Corte Madera were estuaries from the sea). 37 By September 7, all points of the
bay were thoroughly investigated and charted and the ship departed just four days later.
However, the same tides and currents that prevented San Carlos from following her launch
into the bay now caused trouble as she tried to leave; striking a rock at Lime Point on the
north shore and damaging the rudder. The captain maneuvered the craft into Horseshoe
Bay to repair the rudder, and she finally cleared the Golden Gate on September 18, en route
to Monterey. Upon his return to San Bias, Ayala reported that the harbor he surveyed was
indeed one of the finest he had observed: "This is certainly a fine harbor: it presents on sight a
beautiful fitness, and it has no lack of good drinking water and plenty of firewood and ballast.
Its climate, though cold, is altogether healthful and it is free from such troublesome daily fogs
as there are at Monterey, since these scarcely come to its mouth and inside there are very clear
days. It is the best harbor I have seen on this coast north of Cape Horn." 38
Armed with this favorable report, a party was dispatched north in 1775 and Spanish
settlement of San Francisco began the following year. In the spring of the auspicious year
1776, when Captain Cook first visited the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands and a small band
of upstart Americans declared their independence from Great Britain, Don Juan Batista de
Anza led a ragtag band of 30 militiamen and 240 Mexican immigrants overland 1,500 miles
to Monterey. These he left behind as he scouted ahead to find the best site on which to plant a
colony on San Francisco Bay, eventually moving to the sandy northernmost tip of the penin-
sula that now marks the southern terminus of the Golden Gate Bridge. Pedro Font, a member
of the party, recalled what they encountered on the site that the commander designated for
the new settlement and fort:
We saw a prodigy of nature that is not easy to describe . . . the port is a marvel of
nature, and might well be called the harbor of harbors . . . this mesa affords a most
delightful view, for from it one sees a large part of the port and its islands, as far as
the other side, the mouth of the harbor, and of the sea all that the sight can take in
as far as beyond the Farallones . . . although in my travels I saw very good sites and
beautiful country, I saw none which pleased me as much as this. And I think that
if it could be well settled like Europe, there would not be anything more beautiful
in all the world — for it has all the best advantages for founding in it a most beauti-
ful city, for it has all the conveniences desired, by land as well as by sea, with that
harbor so remarkable and so spacious that in it may be established shipyards,
docks, and anything that might be wanted. 39
Arriving in March, they were greeted with understandable apprehension by the resi-
dent native peoples: by the end of the Spanish-Mexican period, the indigenous popula-
tion of California would drop by more than half, as exposure to disease, slavish working
conditions, and constant warfare eroded native communities. The hosts, nonetheless,
37 The names of Alcatraz and Yerba Buena Islands would be forever reversed by British mariner Frederick
William Beechey during his surveying expedition of the region in 1826.
38 Zoeth Eldredge and Eusebius Joseph Molera, eds., The Log of the San Carlos (San Francisco: California
Promotion Committee, 1909).
39 Frederick J. Teggart, ed., The Anza Expedition of 1775: Diary of Pedro Font (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1913). See also Alan K. Brown, ed., With Anza to California: 1775-1776: The Diary of Pedro
Font, O.F.M. (Norman, OK: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 2011).
35
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
were gracious enough to show the newcomers how to survive in this location, with one
Spaniard commenting that the natives were "like lambs, showing no signs of hostility." 40
Aided by this information, the newcomers built adobe houses, laid out farms, and
constructed a garrison to protect their holdings. The presidio that they established featured a
small battery of guns (near today's Fort Point) to announce the Spanish presence and defend
their claim against would-be interlopers. (The ship Columbia, out of Boston, for example, would
be seen later that year loading sea otters along the coast, bound for Canton. The defenders
heated the cannonballs red-hot to shoot at the ship lest she dare enter the port. She did not.) 41
Lieutenant Jose Joaquin Moraga, who led the settlers north from Monterey upon Anza's return
to Mexico, established military fortifications, erecting barracks and clearing a parade ground
by Septemberl7, 1776. Further inland, on October 8, they laid out a mission, San Francisco de
Asis (commonly referred to as Mission Dolores, since it was positioned near a creek named
Laguna de Nuestra Senora de los Dolores, itself allegedly named in recognition of the weeping
natives who watched the construction process) to cater to the needs of the Catholic Church. 42 A
second establishment, Mission Santa Clara, was established in January 1777 on South Bay lands
occupied by Ohlone natives. 43
Despite these advantages and glowing reports, for more than seventy years, San
Francisco remained little more than a sleepy colonial outpost of the far northern stretch-
es of New Spain; a barren stretch of sand dunes and windswept, rocky hills, covered with
brush, and broken up here and there by wooded valleys or by swamps and tidal lagoons.
Annual relief ships, such as the frigate Aranzazu, ostensibly sent from San Bias shuttled
supplies to the California missions while returning to Mexico with items produced by
native laborers. More often than not, the ships failed to arrive. 44 Indeed the relative lack
of contact with the administrative centers of Sonora (caused in part by a series of Indian
uprisings that precluded any meaningful relationships between Alta and Baja California)
led to a remarkably isolated settlement. Occupied mainly by the military during these
times, the few civilian settlers eked out an existence by carrying out sporadic trade in
hides and tallow, or by capturing and marketing seal and sea otter pelts. During the forty-
five years of Spanish rule, the arrival of more than three or four ships a year was a novelty,
and local navigation was virtually nonexistent. The two small schooners procured by the
missions at San Francisco and San Jose from the Russians at Fort Ross were so ill-used
40 Cited in O'Day, "The Founding of San Francisco."
41 Construction of a more imposing edifice, Castilo de San Joaquin de La Punta de Cantil Blanco was
completed in 1794, following the worrisome visit of George Vancouver and a subsequent state of hostility
between Spain and England. Erwin N. Thompson, Seacoast Fortifications: San Francisco Harbor (Denver:
National Park Service, 1979).
42 For a good first-person account of the founding of Mission Dolores, see Francisco Palou, "The Founding
of the Presidio and Mission of Our Father Saint Francis," California Historical Quarterly 14, no. 2 (1935):
102-8 . See also "Moraga's Account of the Founding of San Francisco, 1776," in Herbert Eugene Bolton,
Anza's California Expeditions, Vol. 3 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930).
43 The area of this mission was near the local Ohlone village of Thamien, and the first civil settlement in
California, the Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe. Spanish colonial policy led to the establishment of twenty
religious settlements (missions) as well as a handful of civil settlements (pueblos at San Jose, Los Angeles,
and Santa Cruz) and military encampments (presidios at San Diego, Santa Barbara, Monterey, and San
Francisco).
44 See William Heath Davis, Seventy-Five Years in San Francisco, ed. Douglas S. Watson (San Francisco: John
Howell, 1929).
36
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
that they were scrapped. 45
As the nineteenth century progressed, the community slowly developed. In addition
to the mission and the presidio, a commercial center sprouted up along the shores of Yerba
Buena Cove. The first wooden structure — a clapboard house constructed by Englishman
William Antonio Richardson, who arrived in the city after sailing as mate aboard the British
whaler Orion in 1822 — was not constructed until 1835. 46 That same year, this former carpen-
ter, who taught such skills as navigation and boatbuilding to mission Indians at the presidio,
inaugurated a launch on the bay to ferry goods from ships lying at anchor in the port, thereby
establishing the community as a commercial center. 47 Impressed by the variety of flora and
fauna in the region — everything from marine mammals to an extensive array of wildflowers
and naturally occurring edible plants — the settlers deigned their community "Yerba Buena"
(literally, "good herb"). 48
William A. Richardson
William Anthony Richardson was one of the most colorful and illustrious individuals to inhab-
it early San Francisco. Born in England in 1795, Richardson was an active mariner who arrived
in Yerba Buena aboard the British whaler Orion in 1822. As one of the first residents of that
town following Mexican independence, he was an important presence in the city's formative
years. Becoming a Mexican citizen in 1825, Richardson further cemented his place in society
by wedding the daughter of the presidio's comandante. The nuptials, performed at Mission
Dolores, represented the first notable Anglo-Spanish union in California.
Richardson was granted a sizable estate in the East Bay and an even larger estate in
neighboring Marin County. He developed the Marin property around a freshwater spring
from which he drew water that he sold to visiting ships, which came to favor the anchor-
age of Sausalito over those previously sought out on Angel Island and in present-day San
Francisco.
With the encouragement of the Mexican government, Richardson established the
pueblo of Yerba Buena, which would later become the city of San Francisco. He was named
"Captain of the Port of San Francisco," and operated a launch service from his tiny enclave.
He is said to have instructed local natives in boatbuilding, carpentry, and navigation, and was
routinely called on to pilot visiting ships into and out of San Francisco Bay.
Richardson died in 1856, having seen the small outpost he helped found transform
into a bustling commercial entrepot. Sausalito's Richardson Bay is named in his honor.
Richardson had originally based his operations in Sausalito, where he supplied wood
45 Bancroft lists 128 vessels along the California coast at one time or another in the half decade from 1825
to 1830, and 99 in the following five years. Roger Olmsted, San Francisco Waterfront: Report on Historical
Cultural Resources for the North Shore and Channel Outfalls Consolidation Projects, prepared for the San
Francisco Wastewater Management Program, 1977.
46 When Richardson arrived in 1822, there was no commercial center, only the Presidio and the Mission. His
dwelling would be the start of the pueblo of Yerba Buena, and later the city of San Francisco.
47 John B. McGloin, "William A. Richardson, Founder and First Resident of Yerba Buena," Journal of the West
(October 1966): 493-503. See also Robert Ryal Miller, Captain Richardson: Sailor, Ranchero, and Founder of
San Francisco (Berkeley: La Loma Press, 1995).
48 The shallow, protected anchorage at Yerba Buena Cove, out of reach of the tides and winds that plagued
generations of mariners, was situated between Telegraph Hill and Rincon Point, approximately where the
San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge now enters the city and not far from present day Portsmouth Square.
37
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
and water to the many whalers that called at the bay (in fact, the anchorage now known as
Richardson's Bay was previously referred to as "Whaleman's Bay" after those craft, which
previously called at Yerba Buena island, became frustrated with the difficult-to-access fresh-
water springs and moved to Sausalito for refitting); of the twenty vessels known to have been
on the coast in 1835, 30 percent were whalers. 49 That same year, Richardson, who married
the daughter of the presidio comandante, was appointed "captain of the port" by Governor
Jose Figueroa (though there were relatively few arrivals per annum documented during this
period). An American, Jacob P. Leese, opened the first general goods store the following
year; bankrolled by Monterey businessmen William Hinckley and Nathan Spear, the struc-
ture would soon be leased to merchant William Rae of the Hudson Bay Company. In keep-
ing with the multinational aspect that remained a hallmark of the city from this early stage,
Swiss immigrant Jean Jacques Vioget made the first attempts to lay out the city's streets. 50 The
town was laid out on a grid, ready for trade and commercial intercourse, with all its activities
centered on the bay. Despite the modest dimensions of Yerba Buena cove — 1 mile wide and
with exceedingly shallow water — its potential was not lost on early observers.
Protected from the strong and continuous westerlies of summer and vastly safer during
the gales of winter, the anchorage seemed preordained for greatness. As one visitor commented,
the site was clearly destined to be a major maritime mercantile town: "There is no doubt that
San Francisco will be the great commercial point of California, on account of its great internal
resources and the extent and security of its harbor." 51 By 1839, entrepreneur James Hinckley
arrived via the ship Corsair, which delivered a mule-powered gristmill to his lot on what is now
Clay Street between Montgomery and Kearney, thereby establishing the first manufacturing plant
in the city. 52 It was a sign of things to come. As historian James Delgado eloquently explains:
The development of the waterfront denned early San Francisco economically
as well as physically, generating an urban, commercial and mercantile core that
allowed its developers and inhabitants to thrive in the face of competition and
prosper despite the lack of available land, boom-and-bust economic cycles,
and a series of destructive fires. The founders of San Francisco were capitalists
gambling on San Francisco's becoming a point of transshipment. 53
49 The first whale taken in Pacific waters was captured by Mate Achelus Hammond and his crew of Nantucket
islanders aboard the British ship Amelia in 1788. News quickly filtered back to New England, where first
Nantucketers, and then New Bedfordites dominated the trade, with headquarters in Lahaina and a range
throughout the South Seas.
50 The northern frontier of Mexico was an extraordinarily diverse community, as the presence of whites and
blacks among the Anza expedition shows. To add to the multicultural aspect of the community, the first
Chinese residents could be traced to a trio of immigrants — a woman and two men — who arrived aboard the
ship Bolivar in 1838. "Forgotten Ships of the 1850s," J. Porter Shaw Library MS collection, 1244A. As late
as 1840, there were perhaps 50 residents of Yerba Buena, of whom nearly one-third (16) were not Mexican.
Vioget had arrived in 1837 as master of the Ecuadorian brig Delmira.
51 Yerba Buena cove was not without its flaws. Shallow, with sand dunes abutting the property, it was little
more than a large expanse of mud flats at low tide. Indeed, the presence of steep hills and wide tidal mud
flats seemed to militate against it becoming the great port on the Bay. It was the presence of aggressive,
active merchants that made all the difference.
52 John H. Hittell, A History of the City of San Francisco and Incidentally of the State of California (San
Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and Company, 1878), 92-97.
53 James P. Delgado, GoldRushPort: The Maritime Archaeology of San Francisco (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2009), 7.
38
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
Still, the sluggish community languished. The forts were in ruins and not a single gun
was mounted at the time of Wilkes' 1837 visit. Josiah Belden described the settlement in 1841
as "simply a landing place, where vessels came in to lie and ship hides and deliver goods.
There were some fifteen to twenty houses of all kinds in the place, mostly small shanties . . .
the people were perhaps half Californian, half foreigners." 54
By 1844, the small community had grown to twenty dwellings, including a trading
outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company, several grocery stores, and a pair of grog shops that
served the crew of merchant vessels and whaleships that preferred the sheltered anchorage at
Yerba Buena cove to the exposed anchorages of the presidio. Before the discovery of gold in
1848, the bay furnished few inducements for traders to visit. 55
Nonetheless, as the number of ships calling at the cove increased, the Mexican govern-
ment took notice, inaugurating a customs house on the site in 1844. Soon enough, the need
for orderly settlement would be self-evident as the discovery of gold in the Sierra foothills
enticed the world to rush to San Francisco. Before dealing with that chapter in California's
maritime history, however, other events must first command our attention.
54 Belden, born in Connecticut, was a member of the first planned emigrant party to cross the plains to
California. Arriving in California in November 1841, he settled first in Santa Cruz, where he managed a
store for Thomas O. Larkin, and he later operated a small store in Monterey (Josiah Belden Papers, 1832-
1903, Bancroft Library).
55 In early 1846, there were but 30 houses in Yerba Buena. By June 1847, this number had grown to roughly 180
houses, with an aggregate of 459 residents. Of these, 228 were American, 34 were indigenous persons, and
32 were Spanish or Mexican.
39
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
Anton Refregier's depiction of the
"discovery" of San Francisco Bay
graces the walls of the city's Rincon
Building. The building's twenty-three
murals depict various aspects of San
Francisco history, many of which have
a maritime theme.
Courtesy Paul Judge.
Among the many Spanish sailors who
reconnoitered the California coast, few
had as lasting an influence as Sebastian
Vizcaino. Here he is depicted by Enrico
Martinez in 1603. A typical galleon of the
period is shown to the right.
Courtesy San Diego History Center.
40
Exploration and First Contact: Spanish California
An artistic representation of San Carlos
on approach to San Francisco Bay, being
greeted by local indigenes in traditional
watercraft.
One of the more fascinating figures in early
San Francisco was William A. Richardson,
depicted here in an 1845 daguerreotype. By
this late stage in his life, Richardson had
risen to considerable status and amassed
huge landholdings in the region.
The presidio was established by imperial
Spain to guard the nascent community
of Yerba Buena and the approaches to
San Francisco Bay. It maintained this role
throughout its existence. Here, a mock
battle takes place on the grounds in the
aftermath of the Spanish American War.
Watercolor by William Gilkerson, courtesy San
Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.
A6.36903n.
Courtesy Lucretia Hanson Little History Room,
Mill Valley Public Library.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park, A11. 17, 382 pi.
41
CHAPTER 4
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
Situated on the fringes of Spanish America, Alta California received scant attention from
colonial officials focused on what appeared to be more resource-laden portions of their
empire. Moreover, the small size of the population in this region, scattered along several
hundred miles of coastline, made enforcing imperial prescripts more trouble than it was
worth. As such, during much of the Spanish colonial period in California (1769-1821), laws
aimed at enforcing trade restrictions and other regulations often appeared on the books but
were seldom enforced. This happy half century of "salutary neglect" encouraged a growing
independence on the part of early settlers in California, while opening the door for compet-
ing powers to thrust themselves into the administrative void.
Like all imperial powers, Spain held to the economic policy known as mercantilism.
In this system, colonies were deemed important for a variety of reasons, most notably as
sources of raw materials and as protected markets for domestic producers. Under mercan-
tilism, states should do everything in their power to monopolize trade with their colonies;
above all, outsiders should be denied access to the rich resources and consumers that could
be found in colonial holdings. Under these conditions, states build up a favorable balance
of trade, exchanging surplus items with other nations for goods to which they themselves
had little access. The goal, clearly, was economic self-sufficiency and control of international
trade. As one contemporary axiom stated, "he who controls trade, controls the world itself." 1
In addition to closing access to colonial markets, imperial states forbade their colonists from
engaging in trade and commerce with other nations, and, in an attempt to force colonial
consumers to purchase manufactured items directly from the industrialized mother coun-
try, tried desperately to limit colonial industry. The carrying trade between mother country
and colony was likewise dominated by the controlling nation: one of the last things an impe-
rial country wanted was forced reliance on a third party to fetch and haul items from various
parts of its own empire, which cut appreciably into the profit margin and flew in the face of
self-sufficiency
Throughout most of Spain's holdings, mercantilism was practiced in a highly script-
ed manner. Raw materials — such as gold or silver from the mines in Central and South
America — were collected in New World ports and then sent to Spain or Manila, where
they were exchanged for manufactured items that eventually made their way back to the
Americas. The most famous legs of these exchange routes involved the aforementioned
Manila galleons, linking the Philippines to Mexican Pacific ports, but there were similar
runs from Caribbean ports to Spain, all controlled by merchants and financiers based in
Seville. When the precious metals at Potosi or other American mines were exhausted, New
World markets responded by supplying agricultural products — from corn and wine to leath-
er and beef— to Spain. The sparsely populated regions of Alta California, long seen as an
unprofitable region best suited for use as a forward camp aimed at keeping imperial rivals at
1 Walter Raleigh, Discourse on the Invention of Ships . . . The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh, vol. 8
(http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC02477824&id=JlNlWfc2XV4C&pg=PA317&as_
brr=l#v=onepage&q&f=false), 325.
42
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
bay, did not really fit into this scheme. At this time, none were aware of the tremendous gold
deposits located in the Sierra Nevada, and the small population, even when aided by mission
Indian conscripts, could not harvest enough crops to warrant imperial attention. Moreover,
the distance between the seat of colonial government and this outlying region made enforc-
ing mercantilist proscriptions difficult and expensive; soon, local merchants and entrepre-
neurs recognized that they could engage in surreptitious commerce with other nations at
very little risk, and with much potential profit. Hides and tallow were the primary California
exports, while all varieties of manufactured goods made their way to the isolated Spanish
outposts. 2 This clandestine and illicit trade between Spanish colonial (and later, Mexican)
California and English, Russian, and, especially, American merchants marked the years
between the end of the American War of Independence and the start of the gold rush.
During this period, the largest threat to Spanish interests in California seemed to
come from the British. Ever since Francis Drake laid claim to Nova Albion, the British had
cast covetous eyes on the Pacific coast of North America. Most of their attention focused
north of the current border of California, centered on the trapping and trading activi-
ties of the Hudson's Bay Company holdings in present-day British Columbia. 3 The trio of
Nootka Sound conventions, articulated between Great Britain and Spain on Vancouver
Island between 1790 and 1794 essentially allowed English (and Russian) domination north
of 42° latitude, with the Spanish retaining suzerainty over the southern portion. 4 Still, most
observers were quick to point out that should they wish to extend their holdings, there was
little that the Spanish could do to prevent English penetration into Alta California. The
newly established San Francisco harbor was an attractive target, but it was not their only
area of interest, as evidenced by the 1792-1793 visit of HMS Discovery, captained by George
Vancouver (recently off his reconnaissance of the Columbia River), to the communities of
San Diego, Monterey, and Yerba Buena. 5
Still, San Francisco held special promise. Sailing into the port on a mid-Novem-
ber night, guided only by a fire on the beach, Vancouver was puzzled — and somewhat
disgusted — by the absence of lights in the Spanish town. 6 During his eleven-day stay in San
Francisco, Vancouver expressed amazement at the settlement's primitive state, echoing the
Hides served as the basis for a leather-goods industry, while tallow, composed mainly of animal fats,
could be worked in soaps, candles, and assorted useful products. See J. Wade Caruthers, "The Seaborne
Frontier to California, 1796-1850 ," American Neptune (April 1969): 81-101.
See Eric Jay Dolin, Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America (New York: W.
W. Norton and Company, 2010); and Richard Somerset Mackie, Trading beyond the Mountains: The British
Fur Trade on the Pacific, 1793-1843 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997). An older
treatment is Agnes Christine Laut, Pioneers of the Pacific Coast: A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters
(Glasgow: Brook and Company, 1915).
Vivian Fisher, "Esteban Jose Martinez: A Naval Officer Who Steered Spain to the Edge of War in the
Pacific Northwest," Mains'l Haul: A fournal of Pacific Maritime History 36, no. 1 (2000): 14-22. See also
David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994).
Vancouver was in command of an expedition with two ships, HMS Discovery and HMS Chatham, and his
mission was to survey the entire coast, with a focus on the Northwest and the region around the Straits of
Juan de Fuca, to determine if it was a Pacific entry to the Northwest Passage. Vancouver detached a boat
crew under the command of Lieutenant William Broughton to chart the Columbia when he learned of the
discovery and entry into the river by the American ship Columbia Redidiva. See Robin Fisher and Gary
Fiegehen, Vancouver's Voyage: Charting the Northwest Coast, 1791-1795 (Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas
and Mclntyre, 1992).
Arriving on November 14, 1792, Discovery was the first non-Spanish ship to call at San Francisco, though
other foreign vessels had been to various ports in Alta California previously.
43
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
Eurocentric language of many of his contemporaries:
Instead of a country tolerably well inhabited and far advanced in cultivation — if
we except its natural pastures, the flocks of sheep and herds of cattle — there
is not an object to indicate the most remote connection with any European, or
other civilized nation. The only object of human industry that presented itself
was a square area whose sides were about 200 yards in length, enclosed by a mud
wall, above whose tops could be seen the thatched roofs of low, small houses [this
was the presidio]. 7
He also noted the unprotected condition of the harbor's entrance (a pair of dilapi-
dated cannon), maintaining that the defense of California rested more on the ignorance of
the world than on the strength of the Spanish. This was a shortcoming that the residents of
San Francisco — aided by Indian laborers — sought to quickly address. Despite these poor
first impressions, Vancouver recognized the value of the port, stating, "It is as fine a port as
the world affords . . . and its possession ought to be a principal object of the Spanish crown,"
though he remained stunned that the community possessed only one "rotten wooden
canoe" in addition to the native tule balsas. 8 In 1812, a British man-of-war, HMS Racoon,
dispatched from Great Britain to take possession of the American fur-trading post at Astoria
during the recent hostilities between the two nations, visited San Francisco, leading many to
surmise that the British were primed to take the port. Damaged at the Columbia River Bar,
Racoon leaked all the way to San Francisco Bay, where the ship "careened between the island
and the main" encountering trouble near Hospital Cove on Angel Island (hence the current
Raccoon Straits). 9
This did not put an end to British operations in the region: in 1826, the British made an
extensive scientific survey of the approach from the sea, performing the first accurate hydro -
graphic survey up to the waters of the Carquinez Strait. 10 Aside from the oceanographic data
recorded, Captain Frederick William Beechey, of the research vessel HMS Blossom repeated
many of Vancouver's earlier sentiments:
It is true that this port is good, not only for the beautiful harmony that offers
to the view, but because it does not lack very good fresh water, wood, and
ballast in abundance ... its climate, though cold, is healthful and free from
those troublesome fogs which we had daily in Monterey It is a magnificent
port . . . but does not show itself to advantage until after the presidio is passed,
when it breaks upon the view, and forcibly impresses the spectator with the
magnificence of the harbor. One beholds a broad sheet of water, sufficiently to
contain all the British navy, with convenient coves, anchorage in every part,
and a country diversified with hill and dale, partly wooded and partly disposed
in pasture lands of the richest kinds, abounding in herds of cattle ... no fault
7 Quoted in James Miller Guinn, A History of California (Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1915), 78.
8 George Vancouver,^ Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean (London: G. G. and J. Robonson, 1798), 9.
9 John Hussey, ed., Voyage of the Racoon: A "Secret" Journal of a Visit to Oregon, California, and Hawaii,
1813-1814 (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1958).
10 Following this, in 1837 the Royal Navy dispatched HMS Sulphur into the Lower Sacramento River to
produce charts of that area. Published in 1839, these remain the oldest extant documents pertaining to
that waterway.
44
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
can be found in its climate; its soil in general is fertile; it possesses forests of
oak and pine convenient for building. It possesses almost all the requisites for
a great naval establishment and is so advantageously situated with regard to
North America and China — and the Pacific in general — that it will, no doubt,
at some future time, be of great importance In short the only objects want-
ing to complete the scene are some useful establishments and comfortable
residences on the grassy borders of the harbor, the absence of which creates
an involuntary regret, that so fine a country, abounding in all that is essential
to man, should be allowed to remain in such a state of neglect. So poorly did
the place appear to be peopled, that a sickly column of smoke, rising from
within some dilapidated walls, misnamed the presidio (or protection), was the
only indication we had of the country being inhabited ... an industrious popu-
lation alone seems requisite to withdraw it from the obscurity in which it has
so long slept under the indolence of the people and the jealous policy of the
Spanish government, and the more we became acquainted with the beautiful
country around San Francisco, the more we were convinced that it possessed
every requisite to render it a valuable appendage to Mexico; and it was impos-
sible to resist joining in the remark of Vancouver, "Why such an extent of
territory should have been subjugated, and, after all the expense and labor
bestowed upon its colonization, turned to no account whatever, is a mystery
in the science of state policy not easily explained." . . . This indifference cannot
continue; for either it must disappear under the present authorities, or the
country will fall under other hands, as from its situation with regard to other
powers and to commerce ... it is of too much importance to be permitted to
remain longer in its present neglected state. 11
Notably, British interests in the region seemed to worry more about the United States
than they did the Spanish or Mexicans. 12 In 1841, a decade and a half after Beechey's survey,
Sir George Simpson, ranking official of the Hudson's Bay Company in North America, made
prescient observations. Noting but a half dozen ships in the Bay, he commented that the
11 Alan Fraser Houston, "Cadwalader Ringold, US Navy: Gold Rush Surveyor of San Francisco Bay and
Waters to Sacramento, 1849-1850," California History 79, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 208-21. Ringgold was an
officer on the Wilkes Expedition who had surveyed the Sacramento River in 1849. The following year,
he returned to continue the task, this time for a group of private investors who paid for the first charts of
San Francisco Bay and its approaches.
12 This was a time of fierce British-American competition, beginning with the American settlement of
Astoria. British interests prevailed, owing to the activities of the Hudson's Bay Company, which intro-
duced coastal forts, traders, and a steam trading ship, SS Beaver, in 1836. The establishment of Fort
Vancouver on the Columbia saw the gradual introduction of coastal traders with the arrival of ships like
William and Ann, or Cadboro, which extended the trade up to the Alaskan border. During their time of
operation, the Hudson's Bay Company started the lumber trade, salmon trade, and regular commer-
cial links with California, Hawaii, and Russian Alaska. See John McLoughlin and Burt Brown Barker,
eds. Letters of Dr. John McLaughlin, Written at Fort Vancouver, 1829-1832 (Portland: Oregon Historical
Society, 1948). See also James P. Delgado, "The Bermuda Brig William and Ann: Fur Trading Pioneer on
the Northwest Coast of America," Bermuda Journal of Archaeology and Maritime History 8 (1996): 47-58,
James P. Delgado, "Isabella: A Hudson's Bay Company Shipwreck of 1830," American Neptune 55, no. 4
(Fall 1995): 309-320.
45
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
cove of Yerba Buena was "destined to be the site of a flourishing town." 13 He was mortified
at the lack of local navigation, and incredulous that natives' balsas, "miserable and make-
shift" were used to cross the inland waters, "being the only floating things found . . . from San
Diego to San Francisco." The Americans, he added, "if unchecked in California . . . will soon
discover that as masters of the interior, they have a natural right to a maritime outlet ... so
that San Francisco, to a moral certainty, will sooner or later fall into the possession of the
Americans, and the only possible mode of preventing such a result being the previous occu-
pation of the port on the part of Great Britain." 14
The British, while the most loquacious of rivals, were not the only ones vexing Spain.
Russian interest in the region was also strong: representatives from that country had long
been entrenched in North America, and by the nineteenth century, they were preparing to
sail south from their base in Sitka. In 1806, the first Russian ship to visit San Francisco, Juno,
spent six weeks in the port. 15 There, Russian agents acquired grain for the starving settlers
of Russian Alaska (by this time, Mission Dolores alone was producing 4,000 bushels per year
of wheat, corn, barley, and beans), while government agents ingratiated themselves with the
local community, trading Siberian cloth and hardware for locally produced foodstuffs. This
was the beginning of a long and cordial relationship between the city of San Francisco and
the Russian people, marking the first of many notable visits on the part of Russian merchant-
men or naval vessels to that city. (Indeed, Russian Hill in San Francisco is named in recogni-
tion of the final resting place of several members of that and subsequent expeditions interred
on its northern slope.)
In his Life in California, 1830-36, Alfred Robinson reported that "at Yerba Buena
we found a large Russian ship, from Sitka, which had come for a cargo of wheat and beef
fat Mission San Jose frequently supplies the Russian Company who yearly send three
of four large ships for stores for their Northern Settlements." 16 This was impressive, since
another observer mentioned that there were but three mills among all the missions, and that
these "were of the rudest possible character — a single stone attached directly to the upright
shaft of a horizontal water-wheel." 17 Food was not all the Russians had in mind. Writing to
his home government, Count Nicolai Petrovich Rezanov, Imperial Inspector of the Russian
American Company and de facto leader of the expedition, reported: "Your Excellency
perhaps will laugh at my far-reaching plans, but I am certain that they will prove exceed-
ingly profitable ventures, and if we had men and means, even without any great sacrifice on
the part of the treasury, all the country north of here could be made a corporeal part of the
13 The craft included the Russian brig Constantine, removing the last of the settlers from Fort Ross, the
government schooner California ("which represented the entire line of battle of the California navy"),
American brig Alert, British bark Index, and Mexican brigs Catalina and Bolivar. He listed sixteen ships
along the coast, all engaged in the hide-and-tallow trade, despite the fact that any one could "make away
with two-thirds the production of the region." Quoted in John S. Galbraith, The Hudson's Bay Company as
an Imperial Factor, 1821-1869 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 456.
14 In Joshua Paddison, ed., A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California before the Gold Rush
(Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1999), 256-57.
15 When the vessel arrived in San Francisco on April 8, nearly every man on board was showing the ravages
of scurvy. Basil Dmytrshyn, E. A. P. Crownhart- Vaughn, and Thomas Vaughn, eds., Russian Penetration of
the North Pacific Ocean: To Siberia and Russian America, Three Centuries of Russian Eastward Expansion,
Vol. 1 (Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1998).
16 Alfred Robinson, Life in California (San Francisco: William Dixon, 1897), 82.
17 Robinson, Life in California, 84.
46
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
Russian empire." 18
Georg von Langsdorff, a German naturalist who joined the expedition, was incredu-
lous that "there was not a single boat in any of the missions . . . thus they are obliged to go
around the bay rather than across it, a distance of some three times as long," although this he
attributed less to the indolence of the Spaniards (the conclusion reached by Vancouver two
decades earlier) and more to a desire on the part of the friars to keep their neophytes from
fleeing the missions. 19 Perhaps to better see his plans come to fruition, Rezanov embarked
on a whirlwind romance with the underage daughter of a local politico, much to the chagrin
of her parents and the local padres. Reluctantly, Comandante JoseDario Argiiello agreed
that his daughter, Concepcion, could marry the count, but only if both the czar and pope
agreed. Rezanov dutifully headed out to seek their permission, taking his cargo to Sitka
before departing across the Siberian wasteland. After waiting thirty-five years, Concepcion
received word that her lover died en route. Hearing this she fainted, and upon awakening,
entered a local convent where she spent the remainder of her years. 20
The reality of Russian interests on the Eastern Pacific was far less romantic. Motivated
by a desire to collect sea otter pelts (and, failing that, skins of seals, beaver, or just about any
other fur-bearing animal) agents of the Russian- American Company (who supplanted the
independent entrepreneurs known as promyshlenniki) enlisted Aleut and Eskimo hunters
to do their work for them. (The hunters had little say in the matter, since their families were
often held for ransom pending delivery of a sufficient quantity of pelts.) 21 After exhausting all
supplies of locally available furs in the waters off Alaska, the Russians began systematically
exterminating huge numbers of marine mammals farther down the Pacific coast. 22
By 1808, Russian traders were regularly seen in Bodega Bay, hunting otters and trad-
ing for pelts with locals. The following year, Ivan Kuskov and Kodiak returned to Sitka with
2,000 sea otter pelts. 23 The environmental impact was severe and immediate: when Kuskov
returned aboard Chirikof 'in 1811, the population of otter had yet to rebound. Undeterred,
he took nearly 1,200 otter from grounds farther afield, including a large number from
the Farallones (where they would eventually establish a permanent sealing station that
18 Such schemes were not new to Rezanov. Born into a noble St. Petersburg family in 1746, he had spent his
youth working as a diplomat in Siberia for Empress Catherine II. A founder of the Russian-American
Company, he sponsored the first Russian circumnavigation of the globe, was imprisoned in Japan as part
of that expedition, and envisioned Russian domination and annexation of the entire western shore of
North America. The most complete biography of Rezanov remains Hector Chevigny, Lost Empire: The Life
and Adventures of Nikolai Rezanov (New York: Macmillan Press, 1937).
19 "When such an occasion dictates water transport . . . they make a kind of boat of straw, reeds, and rushes,
bound very compactly, so that they are able to go from one shore to the other" (Georg von Langsdorff,
Langsdorff 's Narrative of the Rezanov Voyage [San Francisco: Thomas C. Russell, 1927]), 34.
20 For Rezanov, see Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov, The Rezanov Voyage to Nueva California in 1806 (San
Francisco: Thomas C. Russell, 1926).
21 James R. Gibson, Imperial Russia in Frontier America: The Changing Geography of Russian America,
1784-1867 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
22 The Russians were not the only ones active in the Arctic theatre. See John R. Bockstoce, The Opening of
the Maritime Fur Trade at Bering Strait: Americans and Russians meet the Kanhigmiut in Kotzebue Sound.
Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2005.
23 Leonid Shur, ed., The Khlebnikov Archive: Unpublished Journal (1810-1837) and TravelNotes (1820, 1822,
and 1824) (Anchorage: University of Alaska Press, 1990). See R.A. Thompson, The Russian Settlement
in California Known as Fort Ross, Founded 1812. . .Abandoned 1841: Why They Came and Why They Left
(Santa Rosa, CA: Sonoma Democrat Publishing Company, 1896).
47
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
supplied over 1,200 furs annually). 24 In 1812, much to the chagrin of Spanish authorities, the
Russians established a settlement 90 miles north of San Francisco Bay, near the eponymous
Russian River. Two years later, Spanish officials informed their new neighbors that these
facilities at Fort Ross (whose carpets, piano, and glass windows must have compared favor-
ably to the flea-infested sand dunes marking San Francisco at that time) violated Spanish
laws and that they should abandon their post immediately. Yet the Russians remained,
and half-hearted Spanish efforts to remove them were opposed by soldiers, settlers, and
missionaries, who benefited from the presence of these furtive trading partners. 25 Aleutian
Island natives, coerced into serving as fur hunters, were regularly seen carrying their
kayaks to the bay, or hunting their prey along the north side of the Golden Gate, out of
range of Spanish guns. 26 From these tepid starts a deeper relationship grew: in October
1816, the modest two-masted brig Rurik entered San Francisco as part of a scientific expe-
dition led by the German-born Otto von Kotzebue. 27 At 180 tons, the tiny vessel had an
impressive mission: launched from St. Petersburg in 1815, the vessel began an around-the-
world trip with two stated goals — to explore the islands of the South Pacific and to locate
a passage from Alaska to the Atlantic seaboard — and an unstated mandate: to intimidate
Spanish officials into opening up relations between San Francisco and Alaska.
Fort Ross
Among the most vexing problems for Spain was competition from rival imperial powers.
While the exploits of Sir Francis Drake are well known, representatives from tsarist Russia
made an equally impressive challenge to Spanish hegemony. Fur-trading emissaries had
steadily moved south from Russian Alaska, and by the eighteenth century, approached
the infant settlement at Yerba Buena. With the consent of their home government,
representatives of the Russian-American Company scouted out potential footholds
along the northern California coast to base their fur-trapping and hunting activities.
Following negotiations with local tribes, the Russians established Fort Ross in 1812. This
marked the southernmost point of Russian expansion in North America and the largest
concentration of Russian settlers south of Alaska. The base of their operations was a tiny
establishment located in present-day Sonoma County, fifteen miles north of Bodega Bay.
Known as Fort Rus, later anglicized to Fort Ross, the settlement served a dual role. As
home base for otter hunters, it provided access to the rich hunting grounds of Bodega
Bay, and provided food to sustain the larger Russian populations then active in Alaska.
The Russian settlement brought much advancement to Alta California. Fort Ross
was home to the first windmills and shipyard in the region, producing four ships —
Rumiantsev, Buldakov, Volga, and Kiahtha — and several longboats. Additionally, the
Russian settlers introduced such refinements as glass windows. Scientists associated
24 Such ecological devastation was not, of course, limited to the Russians. Early American sealers, led by
brothers Nathan and Jonathan Winship, included Albatross, O'Cain, Mercury, and Isabella. They took
over 30,000 seals between 1809 and 1810. Peter White, The Farallon Islands: Sentinels of the Golden Gate
(San Francisco: Scottwell Associates, 1995).
25 See Thompson, The Russian Settlement in California Known as Fort Ross.
26 Glenn Farris, "Otter Hunting by Alaskan Natives along the California Coast in the Early Nineteenth
Century," Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 43, nos. 3-4 (2003): 20-33. See also John
Bockstoce, Furs and Frontiers in the Far North: The Contest among Native and Foreign Nations for the
Bering Strait Fur Trade (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).
27 August C. Mahr, The Visit of the Rurik to San Francisco in 1816 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1932).
48
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
with the community made many important observations about the local flora and fauna,
including detailed ethnographic notes concerning the region's aboriginal inhabitants.
The compound consisted of a redwood fort that, though outfitted with heavy
cannon and formidable defenses, was never tested by Spanish or natives. Other struc-
tures included a chapel, barracks, warehouses, and commanding officers' quarters.
A tannery, brickworks, barns, and other utilitarian structures were nearby, and sixty
dwellings, from modest adobe homes to more elaborate buildings. By 1841, however,
sustained overhunting severely depleted the stocks of otter and fur-bearing animals, and
the agricultural productivity of the land proved insufficient to meet the demands of the
Russians farther north. The company abandoned the property, selling it to John Sutter
for an estimated $30,000. By the first decade of the twentieth century, ownership of
Fort Ross had been transferred to the State of California. Less than a month after this
transfer, the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 inflicted substantial damage to the
property. Restoration of the surviving structures began in 191 6. Since that time, much
money and effort have gone toward recreating the original setting of the colony, includ-
ing detailed archaeological investigations that have led to an accurate portrayal of life in
Russian California.
A designated National Historic Landmark, the property is listed on the National
Register of Historic Places and currently operates as the Fort Ross State Historic Park.
The visitors remained for the better part of a month, obtaining much-needed supplies
and enjoying lavish entertainment. Adelbert von Chamisso, a botanist with the expedi-
tion, noted that California seemed neglected: no imports had arrived from Mexico in the
preceding six or seven years, while trade restrictions prevented the region from becoming
a true agricultural and commercial site. "The misery in which they had been wallowing
for six to seven years, forgotten by Mexico, the motherland, did not allow them to be good
hosts." This was alluded to by other visitors: since the Spanish neglected to send regular
supply ships to the colonists, the Californios seldom turned away foreign skippers when
they arrived with shiploads of essential goods. Independence did not greatly change this
scene. When Kotzebue returned in 1824 aboard the Russian frigate Predpriste, conditions
had hardly improved: he had to send gunpowder ashore so the Mexican sentinels could
adequately return his salute. The navigator noted:
It has hitherto been the fate of this region, like that of modest merit or humble
virtue to remain unnoticed, but posterity will do it justice. Towns and cities will
hereafter flourish where all is now a desert . . . the water over which scarcely a
solitary boat is seen to glide, will reflect the flags of all nations and a happy, pros-
perous people, receiving with thankfulness what prodigal nature bestows for
their use, will disperse its treasures over every part of the world. 28
Echoing Vancouver's assessment, Chamisso observed that the presidio was undermanned
and lacked boats; only the mission had a few "bad barks, built by foreign captives." 29
28 Like others before him, Chamisso was dismayed that "Spain did not have a single boat on the bay."
See Edward Mornin, "Adelbert von Chamisso: A German Poet-Naturalist and His Visit to California,"
California History 78, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 2-13.
29 Mornin, "Adelbert von Chamisso," 6.
49
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
(Interestingly, the missions at San Jose and Santa Clara along the southern arms of the bay
had their own launches and a "strong, light and slender boat" used to conduct trade with
Russian settlers at Fort Ross. 30 ) Despite Rezanov's views, the Russians were more content
with peaceful commercial relations than with military conquest, as evidenced by the
recurring visits of Russian merchantmen. By 1841, however, with fur stocks in decline, the
Russians abandoned their holdings at Fort Ross and retreated to Alaska.
While the British and Russians were the most frequent visitors to Spanish-Mexican
California, they were by no means alone. The appearance of the French merchantman
Bordelais in August 1817 spoke to the growing international interest in San Francisco, but
it was, like the Russian visit, purely a commercial venture. (This was not the first time the
French flag appeared in California waters: in 1786, two frigates of the Royal French Navy
under the command of Captain Jean Francois Galaup, Comte de La Perouse, spent ten
days in Monterey, taking on water and supplies for a trip to the Philippines. Boussole and
Astrolabe were among the first non-Spanish ships to anchor in California waters since
Golden Hinde nearly two hundred years earlier.) Subsequent events proved that it was not
the Russians, the French, or the English, but the Americans who posed the most serious
threat to Spanish control of California.
In the days following independence, American merchants — now divorced from the
mercantilist protections that granted them unfettered access to the guaranteed markets
of Great Britain — were hard-pressed to find new outlets for their agricultural exports.
Intrepid American entrepreneurs sought consumers in the Levant (where they encountered
North African pirates — the Barbary corsairs — in their pursuit of opium), the Orient (where
the "flowery-flag devils" were met with indifference by court officials) and in similar scat-
tered parts of the globe. During these far-flung voyages taking up to three years, American
merchant sailors heard of commodities, native to the Pacific coast of North America, that
could bring tremendous profits if delivered to Asia. Sea otter pelts, which one tradesmen
described as "the most beautiful object, other than a woman, that can be placed before a
man," were known to command upward of $200 each in Canton. Gathered for as little as $2
in the waters of the eastern Pacific, this was naturally alluring. 31
With 100,000 follicles per square inch, the luxuriant furs were used by fashionable
ladies, court officials, and image-conscious consumers throughout Asia. Shrewd merchants
exchanged this cargo for tea and silks that fetched a handsome profit in London or other
western markets (for, as one observant merchant stated, "tea must be drunk, and silk
must be worn, as long as there is a female influence in society, a time that will last until
happy eternity" 32 ) The pursuit of sea otter pelts and other commodities for exchange in
the bustling markets of China ushered in a period of sustained contact between Spanish
colonial California and the infant United States. It was a fateful relationship: although
most American merchantmen made for the ports of the Pacific Northwest, it was inevi-
table that citizens of the new republic would soon be encountered in California. As early
as 1789, Governor Pedro Fages alerted San Francisco comandante Jose Dario Argiiello to
seize any foreign vessel that might stop there, and decreed that no foreigners were to land
30 Mornin, "Adelbert von Chamisso," 7.
31 Adele Ogden, The California Sea Otter Trade, 1784-1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941).
32 On Ledyard, see Edward G. Gray, The Making of John Ledyard: Empire and Ambition in the Life of an Early
American Traveler (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 60.
50
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
at California ports or cross its borders. 33 (The first American to set foot in California was
John Green, a sailor who had been part of a scientific expedition led by the Italian mari-
ner Alejandro Malaspina, who, sailing for Spain, surveyed Monterey in 1791.Green died
during the expedition and was interred at that town's presidio.) Perhaps this was a neces-
sary step. In November 1818, United States Special Commissioner J. B. Prevost proposed
seizing San Francisco, lest it fall into Russian hands: "The port ... is one of the most conve-
nient, extensive, and safe in the world, wholly without defense, and in the neighborhood of
a feeble, diffused, and disaffected population. Under all these circumstances, may we not
infer views as to the early possession of this harbor, and ultimately to the sovereignty of all
California?" 34
On November 20 of that same year, French-born privateer Hipolito de Bouchard,
flying the flag of the revolutionary Republic of Buenos Aires, sailed two black-hulled vessels
into Monterey Bay, sacking the town before heading south to raid other coastal settle-
ments. 35 At least three members of the crew were American: Joseph Chapman was captured
at Monterey but paroled, going on to lead a respectable life in that community. Thomas
Doak of Boston and an African-American known simply as Bob had previously jumped
ship; in due time they were baptized ("Felipe Santiago" and "Juan Cristobal"), married into
leading Monterey families, and became well-established members of that society. 36
Despite imperial proscriptions against trade with foreigners (including a 100
percent duty levied against goods carried in non-Spanish ships), Californians were accus-
tomed to foreign-flagged vessels entering their ports. Distressed whalers and other vessels
in need of assistance were granted access on humanitarian grounds, allowed to stay long
enough to secure repairs and provisions. So long as the vessel departed within a limited
amount of time (usually within 24 to 48 hours) there was no need for concern; items
acquired and services rendered were paid for with household goods brought from New
England or other regions. It was not long, of course, before many whalemen used this ruse
to develop a full-fledged trading network: claiming need of assistance, merchantmen pulled
into port and off-loaded their cargo (in one extreme case, a baby grand piano shipped
around Cape Horn to Monterey) for California clients ordering from East Coast manufac-
turers. 37 Gradually, then, a surreptitious trade between Spanish California and the infant
United States began, with manufactured items making their way from the East Coast in
33 The maritime border was by far more porous. The first overland party to reach California arrived in 1836
under the command of American fur trapper Jedediah Strong Smith. He and his followers were promptly
ejected. Jon Carlson, "The 'Otter-Man' Empire: The Pacific Fur Trade, Incorporation, and the Zone of
Ignorance," Journal of World Systems Research 8, no. 3 (2002): 390-442.
34 James R. Gibson, Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest
Coast, 1785-1841 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1992).
35 Carlos Lopez, "Hipolito Bouchard: Pirate or Patriot?" Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History
36, no. 4 (2000): 22-33. See also Craig Arnold, "Pirates on the Pacific Coast of New Spain," Mains'l Haul:
A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 32, nos. 2-3 (1996): 24-34, 26-36; and Peter Gerhard, Pirates on the
West Coast of New Spain (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1960).
36 Allen Light, a shipmate of Richard Henry Dana on Pilgrim, had a similar experience. Jumping ship in San
Diego in 1835, he became a successful otter hunter, earning the sobriquet "Black Steward" and becoming
a Mexican citizen three years later. By 1843, Light had settled comfortably in Mexican California, having
been appointed a special commissioner responsible for stopping illegal poaching activities.
37 For further details on the role of whalemen in undermining Spanish and Mexican authority, thereby
creating the grounds of a bloodless American takeover, see Boyd Huff, El Puerto de Eos Balleneros:
Annals of the Sausalito Whaling Anchorage (Los Angeles: Glen Dawson, 1957).
51
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
return for sea otter pelts destined for Chinese markets or, in later years, mission-produced
hides and tallow.
The first American ship to call at a California port was the appropriately named Otter,
a Boston-based vessel under the command of Ebenezer Dorr, which docked at Santa Cruz
(near Monterey) in 1796. Engaged in the pelt trade with northwest natives, the eponymous
vessel made trans-Pacific runs to the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii) then to the
markets of mainland China. When she called at Monterey for fresh water, few realized or
expected that this would usher in a period of sustained contact between California and the
East Coast, or that this visit would set in motion a series of events that would lead to the
eventual acquisition of that territory by the United States.
Three years after this inaugural contact, on May 24, 1799, another Boston-based
ship, the twelve-gun, 159-ton Eliza, called at San Francisco. Becoming the first American-
flagged vessel to visit the port, the ship, captained by James Rowan, acquired provisions and
hastily departed, in full compliance with Spanish law. Before departing, however, Rowan
hinted broadly that good money would be paid for sea otter pelts by the next American ship
allowed to berth in the port. The second American vessel to call at Yerba Buena, Alexander,
arrived four years later, in May 1803. Captain John Brown remained there for a week and
sailed for Bodega Bay, a few miles north, to trade sea otter pelts with local tribes. Returning
in August with another vessel (Hazard) in tow, Brown sought relief, claiming that he
had been attacked by hostile natives along the coast. The commandant refused to allow
Alexander to stay, but permitted Hazard, ironically captained by the same James Rowan
who had first visited the port in 1799, to stay for a few days. Owing to bad weather, that ship
remained in port for more than a week before departing for Asia with its cargo of pelts and
Hawaiian sandalwood. It would not be the last time Hazard visited Yerba Buena: on January
30, 1804, the vessel returned. On a voyage from the Sandwich Islands she suffered the loss
of five men, her boats, and a mast during a severe storm: allowed to refit at Yerba Buena, she
continued on to the Pacific Northwest.
Far to the south, the relationship between Californios and Americans developed
along a somewhat different line. In 1800, Betsy, also out of Boston, was the first US ship
to call at San Diego; like her predecessors in San Francisco, she tarried just long enough
to raise the suspicion of Spanish officials before hastily departing. The same could not be
said of William Shaler of Leila Byrd who fought a cannon duel with Spanish shore batter-
ies at Ballast Point when they tried to halt his illegal trade in otter pelts in 1803. 38 This close
encounter did not deter Shaler: where earlier captains, fully aware of Spain's embargo, were
wary to overstep their bounds, Shaler saw opportunity. Through his ambitious activities,
the United States became acutely aware of the economic importance of California and of
how woefully defended its ports and poorly enforced its laws really were. Gradually, and
in spite of Spain's embargo, California products began to find their way to Atlantic coast
markets. So, too, did Spanish authorities become aware of American intentions. By 1803,
the reputation of US whalers for smuggling was so marked that the commandant of the
38 Shaler was part owner of the 175-ton brigantine, which he shared with his partner Richard Jeffry
Cleveland. Leila Byrd featured a crew of two dozen, in addition to a Tahitian woman who had joined
the expedition in the South Pacific, and featured a slight armamentarium of six small cannon. For a
good treatment of this trade, consult Mary Malloy, Boston Men on the Northwest Coast: The American
Maritime Fur Trade, 1788-1844 (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1998).
52
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
San Francisco Presidio was cautioned about the "foreign ships which, under the pretext of
whaling, have touched our shores and dealt in contraband." 39
Returning from the Orient and the Sandwich Islands in 1805, Shaler dropped
anchor off San Pedro, and spent the following months sailing up and down the California
coast, trading with Indians and whites in defiance of Spanish law. In a precursor to glob-
al commodity exchange that would define California for centuries to come, this early
nineteenth-century sea captain traded Hawaiian sugar, Chinese silks, and New England-
produced household goods for local California commodities. While earlier sea captains
targeted sea otter pelts, the diminishing population of fur-bearing animals caused others
new to the game to seek out other commodities to be collected at California. Shaler noted
the huge vats of tallow — a rendering of bone marrow and animal fats used as a lubricant
and illuminant — and untold thousands of hides, obtainable for next to nothing, for which
he knew New England shoe and harness makers would pay well. Of even more importance,
Shaler observed that the laws of Spain carried little weight when paper decrees remained
unenforced. Moreover, since the Americans were providing much-needed services in the
absence of Spanish support, there was little incentive for those who might ordinarily be
inclined to enforce imperial trade restrictions and regulations. Even if they were to oppose
the American presence, California could do little to withstand an American commercial
(or military) onslaught. Commenting on the long stretches of coastline and insufficient
harbor defenses, Shaler, returning to Boston in 1808, boldly noted in that city's press: "The
conquest of this country would be absolutely nothing It would fall without effort to the
most inconsiderable force The Spaniards have a few ships or seamen in this part of the
world It would be easy to keep California in spite of the Spaniards as it would be to wrest
it from them in the first instance." 40
Inspired by Shaler's report, increasing numbers of New England sea captains put
in at California ports, commencing an American economic penetration at which mission
fathers and hidalgos looked askance, though some welcomed and abetted it. In the first two
decades, sea otter remained the most valuable California export, and Yankee captains prof-
ited handsomely from this trade. One merchant obtained 300 sea otter skins for two yards
of cotton cloth apiece; another allegedly obtained $8,000 worth of furs for a rusty iron
chisel. Captain William Sturgis — who once cleared over $100,000 during the height of the
Jeffersonian embargo — purchased 560 skins, worth $40 apiece, with goods that cost $1.50 in
Boston. Between 1800 and 1820, 90 percent of American and British ships leaving California
harbors contained sea otter pelts as part of their cargo, unleashing an ecological calamity as
the otter population declined precipitously. 41 By that time, it was not unusual for Boston fur
ships to carry $100,000 cargoes from the American West Coast to China, exchanging their
commodities for spices, silks, gold, and silver, in a veritable recreation of the Spanish galle-
on trade. 42 Such profit came at a price: by 1820, the sea otters were almost exterminated and
39 Jose Joaquin Arrillaga to the Commandants of the Presidios from San Diego to San Francisco Loreto,
June 13, 1830, State Papers Sacramento, II, 58-59.
40 See Richard F. Pourade, History of San Diego (San Diego: Copley Press, 1977).
41 Derek Pethick, The Nootka Connection: Europe and the Northwest Coast, 1790-1795 (Vancouver: Douglas
and Mclntyre, 1980).
42 Frederic William Howay ed., Voyages of the Columbia to the Northwest Coast, 1787-1790 and 1790-1793
(Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 2000).
53
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
their trade was replaced by commerce in hides and tallow, also valuable to Yankee traders.
The virtual extinction of fur-bearing marine mammals from California waters
forced American entrepreneurs to locate other products that could turn a profit. Between
1822 and 1848, California exported more than one million hides and over 7,000 pounds of
tallow. Richard Henry Dana wrote of "large, schooner-rigged open launches," maintained
by the various missions and built and crewed by native neophytes that carried upward of
six hundred hides apiece, ferrying commodities from ship to shore all along the California
coast. 43 Most of this trade was conducted by New England merchants who sold the hides to
Boston tanners and leather-goods factories, and the tallow to South American candle and
soap factories. Yankee ships returned from New England filled with manufactured items
to sell in California, turning into "floating department stores" hawking everything from
shoes, furniture, liquor, and jewelry to fireworks, musical instruments, and fine silk hand-
kerchiefs. As one American captain explained, "We served to clothe the naked soldiers of
the king, when for lack of raiment they could not attend mass, and when the most reverend
fathers had neither vestments nor vessels fit for the church, nor implements wherewith to
till the soil." 44
From Shaler's early actions sprang such a lucrative market that East Coast skippers
flocked to the port despite attempts to enforce a foreign-trade ban imposed by the king of
Spain. These attempts, in part, led to the South American Wars of Independence, and the
eventual transfer of Alta California from Spanish to Mexican control. 45 With Mexican inde-
pendence came an easing of trade restrictions: prohibitions against foreign vessels calling
at California were abolished, and legitimate commercial intercourse increased dramati-
cally, but prohibitively high customs duties ensured that smuggling would continue. What
had once been shadowy commerce between Californians and outsiders became a perma-
nent institution. In 1821, the last year of Spanish control, nine ships visited California; the
following year, the number rose to twenty, and to twenty-four in 1826. Mexican indepen-
dence ended many restrictions on foreign trade, and the new government's lack of authority
and scattered coastal patrols made collecting import and export tariffs difficult. It was not
an auspicious start for Mexican California. 46
California hides helped give New England a monopoly on the shoe industry, while
East Coast merchants found a virgin market for their manufactured products. The canoni-
cal and iconic work on this subject, the first-person account Two Years before the Mast,
recounts the experiences of a young Richard Henry Dana, aboard the Boston vessel
Pilgrim. The brig was typical of its day: bluff-bowed, with nearly parallel sides and a short
run aft, and intolerably slow. Long periods of monotony were broken by frenetic paces of
activity as sea captains, wary of meddling Spanish officials, sought to minimize their time
43 FoundSF, "Angel Island (Wood Island"), http://www.foundsf.org/index.
php?title=Angel_IslandJ%22Wood_Island%22).
44 Robinson, Life in California during a Residence of Several Years in that Territory (New York: Wiley and
Putnam, 1846). On Robinson, see Adele Ogden, "Alfred Robinson: New England Merchant in Mexican
California," California Historical Society 23 (1944): 193-218.
45 Of course, this was but one of the contributing factors to the South American wars of liberation.
46 Sometimes, the needs of the remote outpost were poorly understood: in 1841, the brigjoven Carolina
arrived with a cargo of cocoa, while another South American visitor brought only sugar cakes and coffee
beans. An excellent treatment of this period can be found in Jessie Davies Francis, An Economic and
Social History of Mexican California, 1822-1846 (New York: Arno Press, 1976).
54
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
in port. Cargoes were lightered from ship to shore in San Diego (which would become
the center of the hides-and-tallow trade) or decrepit ports like San Pedro (which Dana
described as "a desolate place . . . the worst we had seen yet" 47 ). During these years, and
through these activities, Americans developed an interest in Southern California and by
1820, a fleet of Yankee ships was sailing around Cape Horn to load California hides and
tallow at San Pedro or San Diego. Generally not more than a dozen vessels arrived in any
one year, though they can be credited with inaugurating a commercial connection far out
of proportion to their number. As late as 1847, hides were reputed to fetch between $1.50
and $2.00 per piece, and more than 100,000 were said to be shipped yearly from various
California ports. Ships in the employ of Boston merchants William Appleton and Company,
Bryant, Sturgis and Company, or Joseph B. Eaton and Company moved from port to port,
trading with local ranchos at Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, or any other place where there was
an accumulation of hides.
Although the sea otter trade continued into the 1840s, by the time of Mexican inde-
pendence, cattle hides and tallow had gradually surpassed the former commodity. The
voyage of the Boston-based Sachem was particularly telling. Departing from Massachusetts
in January 1822, she returned there two years later loaded with hides that she discharged
at considerable profit to the shoe manufacturers at Brockton. 48 More important, it was the
first time a Boston vessel had sailed for the Pacific and returned directly home without stop-
ping first at Hawaii or China — a harbinger of things to come. The overall result of these
activities, both legitimate and illicit, was even deeper penetration of California markets by
American merchants and sea captains. With the coming of Mexican independence in 1822,
trade restrictions between California and the rest of the world relaxed with dire conse-
quences for the new republic. In the quarter century from 1821 until American annexation
in 1846, the Mexicans endured what Spain long feared: the gradual erosion of their power
and influence in California to a steady stream of outsiders.
The reasons for this decline are easily understandable. The non-Indian population of
Mexican California never exceeded seven thousand, of which less than one thousand were
adult males. The leading families of Mexican California, moreover, led lives of comfort and
civility, especially after developing trade with New England or other locales. Increasing
contact with the outside world transformed the region dramatically, destabilizing internal
politics while nudging it ever closer to the American orbit. Early American merchants wrote
glowing and covetously of California. While financial concerns were centered on sea otters
to the north or hides to the south, few doubted that the true wealth of California centered
on the San Francisco harbor. The first book by an American writer describing the region
was penned by Benjamin Morrell, who, in command of the schooner Tartar, visited San
Francisco in 1825 and seven years later published a book in which he wrote:
The bay of San Francisco, connected with the surrounding scenery, is the
most delightful I have ever seen on the western coast of America ... it presents
a broad sheet of water, of sufficient extent to float all the British navy without
47 Cited in Guinn, A History of California, 450.
48 Sachem was commanded by William Alden Gale, who had first learned of the trade in hides from a
Mexican official sent to California to guard against American fur smugglers. Envisioning a lucrative
Cape Horn trade, Gale outbid rival English claimants for a large shipment of hides, thereby ushering in a
long-standing period of trade.
55
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
crowding; the circling grassy shore, indented with convenient coves and the
whole surrounded with a verdant, blooming country, pleasingly diversified with
cultured fields and waving forests, meadows clothed with the richest verdure in
the gift of bounteous May; pastures covered with grazing herds; hill and dale,
mountain and valley, noble rivers and gurgling brooks. Man, enlightened, civi-
lized man, alone is wanting to complete the picture, and give a soul, a divinity
to the whole. Were these beautiful regions, which have been so libeled, and are
so little known, the property of the United States, our government would never
permit them to remain thus neglected. The eastern and middle states would
pour out thousands of emigrants, until magnificent cities would rise on the
shores of every inlet along the coast of New California, while the wilderness of
the interior would be made to blossom like the rose. 49
In 1835, Alexander Forbes, an author who spent significant time in California, wrote
glowingly of the region, noting, "the port of San Francisco is hardly surpassed by any in
the world Perhaps no country whatever can excel or hardly vie with California in natu-
ral advantages." 50 That same year, Daniel Webster opined on the floors of Congress that
San Francisco Bay was worth twenty times the value of Texas, but when President Andrew
Jackson offered the Mexican government the sum of $3.5 million for the region, he was
rebuffed.
Dana, who visited in 1835 and whose book appeared a half decade later, concurred.
Though he was distressed by the lack of "civilization," noting but one building, "a shanty of
rough boards put up by a man named Richardson, who was doing a little trading between
the vessels and the Indians," he did add, prophetically: "If California ever becomes a pros-
perous country, this bay will be the center of its prosperity. The abundance of wood and
water; the extreme fertility of its shores; the excellence of its climate, which is as near to
being perfect as any in the world; and its facilities for navigation, affording the best anchor-
ing-grounds in the whole western coast of America: all fit for a place of great importance." 51
Like others before him, the young New Englander commented on the rustic nature of a
region that would soon become one of America's most urban locales: he reported how
gunshots aboard his vessel had disturbed herds of deer on the hillsides of what is today San
Francisco; of elk swimming the Carquinez Straits; of coyotes and puma howling in the hills
behind Mission Bay; of bear attacks in San Leandro; of pelicans attacking hapless mission-
aries throughout the bay.
The hide and tallow merchants tended to come from the best families of New
England and represented the rise of the Boston Brahmin in the later nineteenth century.
In addition to John Marsh, a graduate of Phillips Andover Academy and Harvard College,
they included Thomas O. Larkin, Faxon Dean Atherton, and others who left their names on
the California landscape as testament to the pivotal role they played in developing an inter-
national economy in Mexican California. Shortly after Mexican independence, American
merchants supplanted their English competitors and came to dominate the trade. William
49 Benjamin Morrell. A Narrative of Four Voyages (New York: J & J Harper, 1832).
50 Alexander Forbes was a partner in the Mexican firm of Barron & Forbes, who invested in California
trade and ultimately were the initial developers of the New Almaden mercury mines south of San Jose.
51 Richard Henry Dana, Two Years before the Mast (1841; reprint, New York: Collier, 1961), 46.
56
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
Alden Gale, a Massachusetts man in command of a general cargo trader (that carried,
among other things, tombstones, drugs, and iron safes), abandoned this varied cargo in
favor of hides and finished leather goods. 52 In command of the aforementioned Sachem,
he outbid the English, cornered the market, and carried the first shipment of hides out of
Mexican California. Paying a lump sum to local officials, merchants such as John Bryant
and William Sturgis of Boston controlled two-thirds of the trade by the 1830s, and their
ship Brookline carried the most valuable cargo ever sent to the Pacific. Furious customs
agents refused to let the cargo ashore, but this did not end the nascent trade. Manufactured
goods made their way around Cape Horn to California, where they were exchanged for sea
otter pelts that were transshipped to China; exchanged there for tea, silks, and other luxury
items, these goods eventually made their way to the ranchos of California where they were
traded for hides and tallow. All told, the complicated network linked markets separated by
thousands of miles and two oceans, while seeding an American presence throughout the
Pacific Rim, and linking California to the outside world. Many of the commercial agents
married into leading families in the areas they visited, or otherwise ingratiated themselves
with local elites, all the time drawing closer financial and political links between the United
States and Mexico's northernmost territories. In the words of one historian, "long before
the first shots were fired in the Mexican War, California had already fallen to Boston trade
ships." 53 William Garner summed up the relationship between California and the United
States as evidenced by the hide and tallow trade in the year that conflict began:
Notwithstanding that oxhides are sold here for a dollar and fifty cents each for
cash, you cannot buy one half the time, a pair of shoes Still, ox-hides can be
taken from California to America . . . tanned and dressed, and made into shoes and
then brought around Cape Horn, and an importation duty paid, and after all this
trouble and expense, they are sold here at the same price as those manufactured
in the country [CA ]and very frequently from twenty to fifty per cent less. 54
Clearly, despite achieving independence a quarter century earlier, Mexico maintained
California in a colonial dependency whereby that region was export-oriented and depen-
dent upon outside manufacturers for finished goods.
The growing American presence — between 1800 and 1847 an estimated 200 US
vessels carried some five million hides from California — and interest was aided and abetted
by a continuing reluctance on the part of Mexican officials to agree with the increasingly
52 Hubert Howe Bancroft, Albatross: Log-book of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast in the Years 1809-1812,
Kept by Wm. Gale, MS in History of California: 1801-1824 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1886).
53 Karen Clay, "Trade, Institutions, and Credit: Contract Enforcement on the California Coast, 1830-1846,"
Explorations in Economic History 34, no. 4 (1997): 495-521.
54 W. R. Garner, Letters from California, 1846-1847 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).
57
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
liberal demands of Alta California. 55 Settlers there, who now included a sizable number of
non-Mexican immigrants, called for greater representation in the Mexican government, for
a loosening of restrictions on trade and commercial activities, and for an end to the stipula-
tion that all Mexican nationals be members of the Roman Catholic faith. Furtive indepen-
dence movements had been squelched — either by force (1831) or capitulation to Californio
demands (1836) — but there was seething discontent, discontent that Larkin, in his role
as American consul and confidential agent, was ordered to monitor. Larkin was further
instructed to offer assistance to any such movement that had a chance of success, and to
position the Americans in such a way so that Russian interests in acquiring the territory
would be thwarted. 56 He would get his chance to involve the United States in California, but
in a way that few would predict.
In 1841, the port hosted Commodore John Wilkes and the United States Exploring
Expedition; while he had been directed to make extensive explorations in the Pacific,
his instructions directed him to visit California, with "special reference to the bay of San
Francisco," and the surveys ordered in other parts of the Pacific were presumably regarded
as of secondary and incidental value. 57 In the midst of a four-year scientific and military
venture, the crew was happy to have returned to North America, but anxious to return to
the East Coast. When Wilkes finally brought his weary crew to New York in 1842, his offi-
cial report (not published until three years later) suggested that San Francisco was "one of
the finest, if not the very best harbor in the world," adding, prophetically, "the situation
55 David Igler compiled a database for every known vessel entering California waters between 1786 and
1848, with information on nationality, ship type, voyage route, personnel, and cargo. In all, at least 953
vessels either stopped in Alta California or approached its coast prior to the Gold Rush, making it one of
the most visited parts of the Eastern Pacific. The vast majority of these vessels continued on to the North
West Coast, Alaska, and/or Hawaii, illustrating the network of commercial ports that linked the future
American Far West long before the United States annexed its Pacific territories. International voyages
from ports in the Atlantic Ocean comprise the largest share of traffic in this regional network. Based
on the 953 ships entering California waters, 6.8 percent arrived between 1786 and 1799, 5.7 percent in
the decade after 1800, 7.6 percent in the 1810s, 24 percent in the 1820s, 22 percent in the 1830s, and 34
percent in the first eight years of the 1840s. In short, trade gradually increased until the 1820s, when it
swelled due to developments in California and throughout the Pacific, including Mexican independence,
the termination of trade restrictions in many ports (especially Canton and previously Spanish-controlled
ports), and the global dissemination of the news about Pacific trading opportunities. The largest share
of ships entering California were American (44%), British (13%), Spanish (12%), Mexican (12%), Russian
(7%), but trading vessels from at least 17 other Pacific and European nations also visited California in the
first half of the nineteenth century. While Spanish supply ships from Mexico made up the larger share
of California traffic before 1800, American vessels soon surpassed all other trading nations by a large
margin. United States' commercial interests in the Pacific long predated and ultimately influenced its
geopolitical and military interests of the mid-nineteenth century. Despite the strong position attained
by US trading vessels in California and the Eastern Pacific, at least 527 ships sailing under more than 20
different flags also entered California waters. The point here deserves emphasis: California's commer-
cial activity was international prior to the worldwide convergence of gold seekers, and, perhaps more
important, this internationalization of commerce mirrored developments throughout the Pacific Basin.
See David Igler, "Diseased Goods: Global Exchanges in the Eastern Pacific Basin, 1770-1850," American
Historical ReviewW9, no. 3(June 2004): 693-719.
56 That same year saw the first American naval presence in the region, when the USS Peacock was
dispatched to Monterey following the seizure of the sugar trading ship Loriot and the arrest of its super-
cargo, A. B. Thompson, in 1833. Following the arrest and deportation of many foreigners in 1840, the
Navy sent St. Louis and Yorktown to that same port.
57 John S. Hittell,^4 History of the City of San Francisco (San Francisco: A. Bancroft Company, 1878), 94.
58
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
in California will cause its separation from Mexico before many years." 58 His sentiments
were echoed by many of the other Americans who were moving into the trans-Sierra West:
58 Hittell, History of the City of San Francisco, 95. Wilkes was not alone. Another author lauded San
Francisco as "one of the finest harbors in the world, possessing every requisite for a great naval establish-
ment" (95). American aims might have been speeded by British intentions. In 1842, Sir George Simpson,
head of the Hudson's Bay Company, visited Yerba Buena. He saw the bay as "one of the finest harbors
in the world ... a miniature Mediterranean ... an inland sea." Robert Greenhow, History of Oregon and
California (New York: Freeman and Bowles, 1847), 96.
59
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
whether part of a military reconnoiter or overland fur-trapping ventures, or as agricultural
migrants heading along the California and Oregon trails, many Americans noted the desir-
ability of adding California to the Union and of making "manifest destiny" a reality 59
Increasing hostility between the United States and the Republic of Mexico, largely
over the rumored acquisition of the independent breakaway Republic of Texas by the
former, further fueled the fire initially set by expansionist (and sometimes overtly
racist) jingoists who feared the "loss of California" to other nations. There was some
truth to these concerns: in addition to the Russians, both the French and English sent
scientific, commercial, and military expeditions to the region in hopes that they might
acquire the territory. Smoldering sentiments of manifest destiny, whereby the United
States was fated by divine providence to extend from Atlantic to Pacific, added to the
already tense political situation. The fire grew steadily until it reached the point of
conflagration. Acting on a rumor of war between the United States and Mexico, and
fearful that Britain would then seize California, American commodore Thomas ap
Catesby Jones sped north from his post in Callao, Peru, entered the harbor at Monterey
with the frigate United States and the corvette Cyane, seized the town, and on October
19, 1842, replaced the Mexican standard with the American. Informed of his precipitous
and erroneous action, Jones sailed the next day for Los Angeles, where he proffered
his personal apology to Governor Manuel Micheltorena. Despite this gaffe, the United
States maintained an active naval presence in the region: a large naval force remained
in Mexican waters until 1843, and five American warships visited California ports
between 1844 and 1845. It remained official policy that should war ever result between
the United States and Mexico that the first priority was to seize California. In a missive
dated June 24, 1845, Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft directed Commodore John
Drake Sloat: "If you should ascertain, with certainty, that Mexico has declared war
against the United States, you will at once possess yourself of the port of San Francisco,
and blockade or occupy such other ports as your force may permit." 60
Rumors of war were soon replaced by actuality of conflict. In 1846, claiming that
"American blood had been shed on American soil" by Mexican soldiers engaged in a recon-
naissance mission in south Texas, President James K. Polk asked Congress for a declaration
of war. In what is widely seen as a red herring, the war was not about Texas at all: it was, first
and foremost, an excuse and an opportunity to add California and her deepwater ports to
the United States. Hotly contested by American antiwar forces ("Why", they asked, "had
equally strong claims to British Columbia been abandoned and these claims pursued? Was
it really a war to add more slave territories to the United States?") and by the Mexican mili-
tary, the war resulted in the loss of over one-third of that country's territory. The results
were hardly surprising. At the outset of the war, the American Pacific squadron was a stout
eight vessels strong and ready for action: led by the flagship 54-gun frigate Savannah, it
also included the frigate Congress (54 guns), sloops of war Warren (24 guns), Plymouth
(22 guns), Levant (22 guns), Cyane (20 guns), the schooner Shark (12 guns), and the store-
ship Erie (4 guns). The war is often depicted as an easy military victory for the Americans,
59 John Scaglione and Peter Skene Ogden, "Ogden's Report of His 1829-1830 Expedition," California
Historical Society Quarterly 28, no. 2 (June 1949): 117-24.
60 Herbert M. Hart, "The American Capture of Monterey, 1846," California State Military Museum, http:/ '/
www.militarymuseum.org/Monterey.html.
60
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
and while the struggles in California tend to support that interpretation, brave Californios
fought desperately and valiantly to stem the tide against a superior military opponent. Still,
the naval might of the United States could not be denied: during the conflict, warships
cruising off the coast of California captured twenty-nine vessels and virtually isolated
the region from support and resupply. Aside from American whaleships and government
vessels calling for repairs or with supplies, the California coast was essentially blockaded
and the region cut off from the outside world.
The "Conquest of California" began in June 1846, when a ragtag group of American
fur trappers and mountain men, led by "the pathfinder" John C. Fremont (son-in-law of
Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, leading acolyte of manifest destiny) and the infa-
mous Kit Carson, declared the establishment of the Republic of California, hoisting the
Bear Flag above the Sonoma estate of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. Fremont, a
captain in the US Army Topographic survey and member of an engineering party on his
third survey of the region, subsequently made his way to the presidio at San Francisco
(ferried from the North Bay to that encampment by Captain William Phelps of the hide-
and-tallow trader Moscow) where he spiked the guns defending that enclave and made
way for the eventual acquisition of the port. During his journey, Fremont gave the name
"Golden Gate" to the narrow harbor entrance: "I gave it the name Chrysopylae, or Golden
Gate, for the same reason the harbor of Byzantium was called Chrysoceras, or Golden
Horn." 61 Never was a name bestowed more prophetically: not even Fremont could know
that within a few years hundreds of ships would pour through this portal in history's great-
est gold rush. 62
Hearing of hostilities with Mexico (particularly of battles on the Rio Grande), and
cognizant of Fremont's actions, American naval leaders decided to strike while the iron
was hot. On July 7, Commodore Sloat sailed into Monterey, sending ashore a contingent of
marines from Savannah, Cyane, and Levant. Raising the American flag over the custom-
house, Sloat proclaimed all of California "henceforth a part of the United States." He
predicted a "great increase in the value of real estate . . . the country cannot but improve
more rapidly than any other on the continent of America" under the permanent domin-
ion of the United States. 63 Two days later, the US Navy occupied Yerba Buena, seizing
the harbor at San Francisco Bay, in an engagement that took just three days. Captain
John B. Montgomery, leading a contingent of marines ashore from the sloop of war USS
Portsmouth (dispatched from Monterey on April 25 to claim the city), was astounded by
the diversity seen among the few hundred residents, among whom he claimed to hear
twenty different languages spoken. 64 The diversity was soon to increase: shortly after the
61 Along with the role played by Drake's Golden Hinde and Ayala's Golden Fleece, the term Golden Gate
would symbolize the future role that mineral wealth would play in the region's history. John C. Fremont,
Geographical Memoir upon Upper California (Washington: Wendell and Van Benthuysen, 1849).
62 By September 1846, there were a reported "thirty large vessels consisting of whalemen, merchantmen
and the USS sloop of war Portsmouth at anchor on the placid and glassy surface of the magnificent bay
and harbor" (Edwin Bryant, What I Saw in California: Being a Journal of a Tour, by the Emigrant Route
and South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, across the Continent of North America, the Great Desert Basin, and
through California, in the Years 1846-1847 [ New York: Appleton and Company, 1849], 298).
63 Edwin A. Sherman, The Life of Rear-Admiral John Drake Sloat (Oakland: Carruth and Carruth, 1902), 76.
64 Among the officers on Portsmouth was Joseph Warren Revere, grandson of Paul Revere, and future
Brigadier General in the United States Army during the Civil War.
61
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
Americans claimed the city, a group of 238 persecuted Mormons, led by Sam Brannan,
disembarked from Brooklyn. Brooklyn was a typical pre-gold rush trader: 450 tons, she
carried a diverse cargo of immigrants, a trio of flour mills, a printing press, and a library of
179 volumes. Setting out in January, she proceeded via Honolulu to San Francisco, arriv-
ing just days after the American conquest. These Mormon pioneers, representing the larg-
est shipload of people ever seen up to then in San Francisco, brought social solidarity and
much-needed manual skills as carpenters, millwrights, and as general community build-
ers. Arriving on July 31 after a nine-month trip around Cape Horn, Brannan — who would
establish the first English-language periodical in the city, the California Star — had hoped to
induce other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to abandon Utah
for California. (This contingent had originally been destined for Oregon.) Amid a high-
profile debate with Brigham Young and battles against personal demons, the entrepreneur-
ial Brannan — who would go on to found the first flourmill and the first group of vigilantes
in San Francisco — was unsuccessful in his plans, though he remains an important figure in
early American California. 65
After securing northern California, Robert Field Stockton, who had arrived in
Monterey on July 15 to relieve the aged and ailing Sloat, then turned his attention to the
south. On August4, naval forces landed at and claimed Santa Barbara; two days later, the
same fate befell San Pedro. Stockton ordered Fremont to load his battalion on the USS
Cyane, under command of Samuel F. DuPont, and sail for San Diego, where the American
standard was raised. Fremont then marched north and met Stockton's force of sailors and
marines (an 800-man contingent from the USS Congress) where they entered the pueblo
(civil settlement) of Los Angeles, the largest settlement in Alta California, on Augustl3.
Aided by 350 sailors led by Captain William Mervine of the USS Savannah, who was sent
south from Sausalito the month before, the pueblo fell without a shot. One American,
commenting on the apparent ease with which this early phase of the conquest had been
completed, observed, "we simply marched all over California from Sonoma to San Diego,
and raised the American flag without opposition or protest. We tried to find an enemy but
could not." 66 The naval and maritime component of the conquest cannot be underestimat-
ed: the impressive work of the navy, which had held the principal harbors and cruised the
coast, and the use of sailors and marines from these ships as amphibious adjuncts to land-
based military operations secured California for the United States.
In a proclamation issued four days later, Sloat declared that California was now US
property, and that martial law would be in effect until civil authorities could be elected.
But all was not secure: the American position at Los Angeles was abandoned on September
29, when Commander Archibald Gillespie surrendered and retreated to the merchant
ship Vandalia. Though cleared for departure on October 4, they did not sail, expecting
reinforcements to arrive shortly; an October 6 battle at Domingues Rancho proved unsuc-
cessful, and forced the American reinforcements to retreat to their ships. The final recap-
ture of Los Angeles, in fact, did not occur until January 1847. Thus ended the conquest
of California: now, all American military leaders had to do was realize their ambitions in
65 See Conway B. Sonne, Saints on the Seas: A Maritime History of Mormon Migration, 1830-1890 (Salt Lake
City: University of Utah Press, 1983).
66 Sally Cavell Johns, "Vivalos Californios!: The Battle of San Pasquale," Journal of San Diego History 19, no.
4 (1973), http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/73fall/sanpasqual.htm.
62
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
Texas and elsewhere in Mexico, and wait for the inevitable treaty that would finally deliver
the territory to the United States.
When the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was finally signed in 1848, it accomplished
what many Americans had long hoped for and what many Californians had long feared,
what others had long hoped for, and what all expected: the transfer of that region to the
United States. 67 The change in ownership significantly altered trade patterns throughout
the eastern Pacific, as American attention shifted from Oregon southward. Almost imme-
diately, California's population began to swell: in March 1847, three military transports
brought nearly 600 people, recruited to "conquer and colonize California," to San Francisco
Bay. While many of those aboard the War Department chartered Susan Drew, Thomas H.
Perkins, and Loo Choo — men who had formerly served in Stevenson's New York Regiment
and who had been chosen not just for their martial abilities but for their desire to remain
in California after the cessation of hostilities — dispersed throughout the territory, enough
remained in Yerba Buena that by war's end the population of that community stood at
1,000, roughly seven times what it had been in 1843.
As the largest settlement in the region, Yerba Buena benefited from the war: it served
as headquarters for the American military effort, as home to the quartermaster, and as port-
of-call to dozens of US-flagged whaling ships. Observers noted that as early as September
1846, the town had taken on a distinctly "American" feel:
It was very difficult for me to realize that I was many thousand miles from
home, in a strange and foreign country. All the faces about me were American,
and there was nothing in scene or sentiment to remind the guests of their
remoteness from their native shores. Indeed, it seems to be a settled opinion
that California is henceforth to compose a part of the United States, and every
American who is now here considers himself as treading upon his own soil, as
much as if he were in one of the old thirteen revolutionary states. 68
The city was poised for great things: at the close of the war, municipal leaders decided
upon a series of steps that would meet the demands of their community.
A series of passed ordinances attempted to stem desertions from naval and
commercial vessels. The new regulations licensed merchants and took steps to obtain
sufficient revenue for public improvements — the first to be a municipal wharf for load-
ing and discharging vessels. The means for raising funds, in addition to licenses and
fees, was the sale of submerged real estate in Yerba Buena cove that had been granted
to the town in 1847. In 1847, military Governor Stephen Watts Kearney held a "Great
Sale of Beach and Water Lots" extending existing street lines far into the shallow
cove. The sale of these "water lots" commenced in summer 1847, paving the way for
the ultimate expansion of the town into the cove. The initial subdivision created 450
lots, "all contained between the limits of low- and high-water mark, and four-fifths
were entirely covered with water at flood tide." While the level of maritime commerce
was still modest, with fewer than ten vessels calling in 1848, the site "is known to all
67 Of course, such trepidations were not universally shared. Many of the most influential families of
Mexican California — who had benefitted from decades of clandestine trade with American whalemen
and Boston traders — felt no real loyalty to the government and welcomed the change.
68 Bryant, What I Saw in California, 327.
63
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
navigators and mercantile men acquainted with the subject to be the most commanding
commercial position on the entire eastern coast of the Pacific Ocean, and the town itself
is . . . destined to become the commercial emporium of the western side of the American
continent." 69 Irish-born Jasper O'Farrell, a civil engineer schooled in the art of munici-
pal planning in Chile, expanded upon Jacques Vioget's earlier work and laid out a grid
that would guide the growth of the city for the next century and a half. In an effort to
cement the small town with the great bay in the minds of the international community,
town leaders decided to change the name of their settlement, choosing San Francisco as
the new moniker. It was a sound decision, and one that proves that perhaps, it is "all in
the name." On January 30, 1847, municipal fathers decreed:
Whereas the local name of Yerba Buena is unknown beyond the district;
and has been applied from the local name of the cove on which the town is
built Therefore, to prevent confusion and mistakes in public documents
and that the town may have advantage of the name given on the public map,
it is hereby ordained that the name of San Francisco shall hereafter be used
in all official communications and public documents or records appertaining
to the town. 70
There was much against San Francisco's location (such as steep hills and wide tidal
flats) that seemed to militate against its becoming the great port on the bay, but the pres-
ence of active, aggressive merchants and the adoption of the name of the bay for the
village which had been called Yerba Buena, went far toward turning the flow of cargoes
onto the beaches and later the wharves of San Francisco. Early rival Benicia, for example,
quickly succumbed and took a minor place in the maritime history of the region despite
being blessed with deepwater harbor that was several dozen miles closer to the goldfields.
While the renaming of the town and its geographic and demographic growth was
news enough, of even greater importance was what would soon occur. If ever one needed
proof that manifest destiny was divinely ordained, one need look no further than this:
after 350 years of Spanish and Mexican rule, California produced no mineral strikes of
any appreciable quantity, yet on January 24, 1848, just ten days before ratification of the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican American War, gold was discovered by
Bear Flag Revolt participant James Marshall at a lumber mill located on the property of
Swiss immigrant John Sutter. Where the Spanish had failed to find the fabled Seven Cities
of Cibola, the Americans had stumbled across El Dorado. The resulting gold rush trans-
formed California from colonial outpost to international entrepot and ushered in a new
era in California's maritime history. As Bayard Taylor, a newspaperman in the employ
of Horace Greeley wrote, "of all the marvelous phases in the history of the present, the
growth of San Francisco is one which will most tax belief. . . its parallel was never known,
and shall never be beheld again." 71 California would never be the same.
69 Robert J. Schwendinger, International Port of Call: An Illustrated Maritime History of the Golden Gate
(Woodland Hills, CA: Windsor Publishers, 1984), 5.
70 Hittell, History of the City of San Francisco, 597.
71 Bayard Taylor, El Dorado: Adventures in the Path of Empire (Berkeley: HeyDey Books, 2000), 240.
64
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
The sleepy community of Yerba Buena, as
seen by a contemporary in 1847. Shortly,
the tranquility would be long forgotten.
The Russian settlement at Fort Ross repre-
sented the first shipyard in California, but
was a serious threat to Spanish hegemony.
This image of the Fort Ross pier, less than
two hours' drive from San Francisco, was
taken prior to 1890.
This image, drawn by William Swasey,
depicts Yerba Buena cove and San Francisco
just after the American capture, and prior
to the gold rush. At anchor can be seen the
sloop of war Portsmouth (center), hide-and-
tallow trade ship Vandalia (left), and troop
transports (nee merchantmen) Loo Choo,
Susan Drew, and Thomas H. Perkins.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. A11.21850 pi.
^kt
f— |1
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. Mercedes Pearce Collection.
E11.19,044pl.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. A11. 15695 pi.
65
Contests: Mexican, English, Russian, and American
The tidal mudflats of Yerba Buena cove are
easily discernible in this image taken from
an early panorama of San Francisco. The
chaotic assembly of gold rush ships stand in
marked contrast to the idyllic few of 1847.
Museum ship Lady Washington under
sail in San Francisco Bay. A modern-day
replica of one of the first American-flagged
ships to call at West Coast ports, she is
currently used for educational outreach.
The most popular representation of the
hide-and-tallow trade was furnished by
Richard Henry Dana in his iconic Two
Years before the Mast. Dana's work stimu-
lated interest in California, and the work
of his trading contemporaries seeded an
American presence in the region.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. J. Porter Shaw Library, A11. 16541
Photo courtesy of author.
Courtesy Hayward Area
Historical Society.
66
CHAPTER 5
The Gold Rush
The California gold rush was a movement of epic proportions, acting as a magic wand that
transformed the western United States in ways few thought possible. Before the discovery of
the precious mineral near present-day Coloma, few ventured to California save for fur trap-
pers, whalers, and hide-and-tallow merchants on brief commercial ventures, or members of
the US military, sent to defend far-flung outposts from real and potential dangers. Indeed,
at the time of the transfer of California to the United States, fewer than 10,000 non-Native
Americans lived in the territory, many of whom were military personnel remaining in the
region following the conclusion of hostilities with Mexico. Those civilians that did go,
moreover, tended to follow the Spanish model and hugged the coastline, never moving far
inland where supply lines were tenuous and where the rugged natural landscape prevented
any but the most resolute sojourner from making a home. All of this changed after 1848.1n
the succeeding years, merchants, entrepreneurs, and others made for San Francisco: in the
words of one observer, "the world rushed in" to the greater Bay Area. 1 Most of the newcom-
ers headed for the city of San Francisco rather than other communities (such as Benicia or
Vallejo) that were closer to the goldfields, served by equally deep harbors and ship channels,
and appreciably cheaper, proving that the decision to link Yerba Buena with the surrounding
geography was a prudent one.
The impact on the maritime activity of the region was dramatic. In 1847, shipping
on the Bay was limited to a trio of sloops: one managed by the Mormons to connect their
San Francisco contingent to a settlement on the Stanislaus River; the second, the twenty-
ton schooner Sacramento, owned by John Sutter and skippered by John Yates, which plied
the waters between San Francisco and New Helvetia (near present-day Sacramento); and
a smaller sloop that connected various enclaves throughout the region. During December
1847 and the first quarter of the following year, including coastwise craft, there were but
fourteen arrivals, including one each from China and South America, and a third from the
Sandwich Islands. For the year ending April 1, 1848, just four vessels departed Atlantic ports
with cargo destined for San Francisco, and only eighty-six vessels (including four naval craft
and eight New Bedford-based whalers fresh from the Sandwich Islands) were counted in the
bay over that twelve-month period. Among these was the paddle steamer Sitka, which inau-
gurated steam navigation on the Bay (brought from Alaska aboard a Russian merchantman
to collect hides, she floundered in the waters near Sacramento, and was beaten to Benicia
by a team of oxen. Her chastened owners removed the engines, converted her to a schooner,
and named her Rainbow). 2 The brig Francisco made history as the first commercial vessel to
enter the Golden Gate after the Americans acquired the port, bringing a cargo of 1,000 tons
of lumber to Benicia, but there was little fanfare or notice of the event. Indeed, for eighteen
J. S. Holliday, The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 2002).
This failure did not dissuade others from trying. The first side-wheel steamer, the Captain Sutter, arrived
in 1849, followed by American Eagle and others so that by 1854, a half-dozen steamers operated passen-
ger service between San Francisco and the Sacramento Delta. See Nicholas P. Hardemann, "Overland in
Cargo Ships: The Inland Seaport of Stockton, California," Journal of the West (July 1981): 75-85.
67
The Gold Rush
months or so after the American conquest, there was only mild activity in the region: busi-
ness slowed, no new troops arrived as warships were dispatched to other ports, and few
immigrants moved to the area. An effort was made to solicit immigrants from Missouri
(with an extra issue of the California Star appearing that spring) in the hope that this would
push the population of the city past 800, but aside from that, there was little to suggest that
migrants would soon overrun the port.
News of the strike at Sutter's Mill was slow in making its way across the continent.
Although James Marshall first spied ore in the tailrace of a lumber mill in January 1848, news
spread slowly. Reticence on the part of the first prospectors to share information about the
strike was certainly one factor in delaying the gold rush, as was widespread disbelief on the
part of those told of the discovery. Gradually, however, rumors gave way to substantiated
stories and the rush was on. After President James K. Polk acknowledged the strike in his
message to Congress of December 5, 1848, stating "the abundance of gold in that territory
would scarcely command belief," thousands of self-styled Argonauts made for the goldfields
of the Sierras. 3 By March 1849, 17,000 had already embarked from East coast ports alone. In
the year ending April 1, 1850, 63,000 Argonauts — an amazing 40,000 during the first eight
months — arrived in the city on a variety of vessels. 4 The gold rush, a defining moment in the
development of the United States and an event of tremendous importance in California's
maritime history, had begun.
Dozens of ships were soon arriving daily in San Francisco Bay, and hundreds of thou-
sands passed through the city en route to the Sierra Nevada foothills. Those who came were
relentless in the pursuit of profit, gold fever having a powerful hold on all who participated.
A group of mostly young, overwhelmingly uneducated males descended on California in
search of the mythical El Dorado. The demographic composition of this group made for
a harsh existence: a violent, rough-and-tumble "man's world" existed from the moment
they set out, and very few influences could temper these masculine emotions, either aboard
ship, on the trail across North America, or in California itself. Decrying the city's woefully
skewed gender ratio, the Alta California reported in 1849 that during July that year, 3,614
immigrants came to San Francisco by sea, and just 49 were of the fairer sex. 5 Indeed, not
until the mid-1850s would women compose more than 10 percent of the nonnative popu-
lation of California. Despite the striking gender imbalance, by 1852, only a half-decade
removed from the time when it could boast but three hundred inhabitants, San Francisco
3 Quoted in Gary Kinder, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998), 7.
4 James P. Delgado, To California by Sea: A Maritime History of the California Gold Rush (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1990), 19. For the twenty-month period between April 1849 and
December 1850, there were 1,431 arrivals, for a monthly average of 72. In September 1849 alone, 128
arrived. Monthly vessel arrivals in San Francisco from April 1849 to December 1850 were as follows: 64,
43, 74, 93, 112, 128, 90, 82, 89, 55, 46, 54, 50, 75, 85, 62, 54, 39, 49, 55, and 32.
5 San Francisco Alta California, August 2, 1849. For the role of gender in the making of the American West,
see Michelle E. Jolly, "Inventing the City: Gender and the Politics of Everyday Life in Gold-Rush San
Francisco, 1848-1869" (PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, 1998). See also JoAnn Levy, They
Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992). An
interesting first-person account can be found in Lynn A. Bonfield, ed., From New England to Gold Rush
California: The Journal of Alfred and Chastina W. Rix, 1849-1854 (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark and
Company, 2011).
68
The Gold Rush
claimed 255,000 residents, the city springing from the sea like a modern Atlantis. 6
William Leidesdorff
Among the most interesting figures active in early California was William Alexander
Leidesdorff. Born to an Afro-Cuban mother and Danish Jewish father in St. Croix, Virgin
Islands, in 1810, Leidesdorff's career epitomizes the mutability of race in maritime
California and the struggles endured by persons of color along the frontier of nineteenth-
century America. Leidesdorff immigrated to New Orleans at age twenty-four, becoming
an American citizen at the same time. He was an active merchant and held a master's
license, being the last person of color to command a vessel out of New Orleans before
the enforcement of that city's Negro Seaman Acts. He eventually relocated to California,
arriving in Yerba Buena in 1841, as master of the schooner Julia Ann. He adopted
Mexican citizenship three years later.
Upon his arrival in Yerba Buena, Leidesdorff made an immediate impact. He operat-
ed the first steamer on the bay, opened a number of hotels and warehouses, and acquired
a 30,000-acre ranch on the American River. Branching out to Pacific commerce, he estab-
lished extensive commercial relations with Hawaii, and was one of the first sugar merchants
in the city (his father, incidentally, had been a sugar merchant in the Caribbean). Following
the transfer of California to the United States, Leidesdorff served as alderman of San
Francisco, was elected city treasurer and sat as a member of the inaugural school board.
He also served as US vice consul to Mexico, the only such individual to hold that title. His
business fortunes increased following the discovery of gold, since his extensive landholdings
near Sacramento contained prodigious quantities of the ore. By this time, he was one of the
wealthiest individuals in the region, with extensive landholdings in what is today the finan-
cial district of San Francisco. Regrettably, Leidesdorff never enjoyed his fortune: he died of
brain fever on May 18, 1848. He is interred at Mission Dolores.
Leidesdorff never married and had no heirs. His estate eventually transferred to
the State of California, and to a business associate, Joseph Folsom. As harbormaster and
collector of customs for the Port of San Francisco, Folsom was well aware of Leidesdorff's
fortunes. Taking leave from the army, he traveled to St. Croix where he purchased the
deed to Leidesdorff's California holdings from his parents for a mere $75,000. Though
challenged in court, the uncertainty of probate laws, the complicated nature of a case
involving dual citizenship, and the inadmissibility of testimony from Leidesdorff's family
(since persons of color could not testify in a court of law) meant that Folsom was able to
retain most of what he now claimed as his own property.
Leidesdorff Street in San Francisco is among the only notable memorials to this
legendary man.
Interestingly, among the first to hear of the strike and arrive in San Francisco were a sizable number of
Anglo-Chileans, who, having the advantage of geography on their side, would arrive several months
before the Americans. By December 1849, 92 of Chile's 119 registered ships lay within the confines of San
Francisco Bay. The influence of these South American Argonauts could be seen in the establishment of
a neighborhood known as "Little Chile" located in present-day North Beach, the names bestowed upon
various Bay Area features, and, more tellingly, in the rash of anti-Latin violence that swept the city upon
the arrival of subsequent waves of miners. See Jay Monaghan, Chile, Peru, and the California Gold Rush of
1849 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); and Edward D. Mellilo, "Strangers on Familiar Soil:
Chileans and the Making of California, 1848-1930" (PhD diss., Yale University, 2006).
69
The Gold Rush
Setting out from the East Coast in the winter of 1848-1849, early gold seekers found
their transcontinental progress slowed by snow-packed mountains, ice-clad passes,
turbulent rivers swollen with rainwater, and dangerously flooded plains. Still, in that first
year some 23,000 made the overland trek, and by the end of that year, California's nonna-
tive population grew to 100,000.By December 1849, California held elections, drew up a
constitution, and petitioned Congress for admission to the Union as the thirtieth state, a
step formalized on September 9, 1850. 7 Never before had a territory met the provisions for
statehood so quickly. Another 45,000 made the transcontinental trek, which could take
anywhere from five to eight months, the following year, but for others — the majority — the
overland journey was too dangerous, and above all else, too slow. 8
In reaching the goldfields, fortune favored the swift: entrepreneurs searched for the
quickest ways to bring passengers and eclectic, speculative cargo to the goldfields, employ-
ing everything from steam technology to vessel designs that maximized speed under sail.
Many, therefore, braved the North Atlantic winters as they pushed off from New England
ports bound, around Cape Horn, or across the Central American isthmus, to the goldfields.
This was a baptism by fire, as many who had never gone to sea received their first introduc-
tion to the watery world in the form of winter gales and nor'easters. Thus, the gold rush was
largely a maritime phenomenon, with far-reaching effects as tens of thousands of persons —
many of whom had no prior seagoing experience — made for California by ship. 9 Pooling
their resources in joint stock companies that similarly peopled New England two centu-
ries earlier, migrants tried to live aboard as they had ashore, but this was difficult as they
shared their living quarters with livestock, eclectic goods destined for the markets of San
Francisco, and others with a dream of striking it rich. "Not since the crusades," said news-
paper editor J. D. B. Stillman, "had such an assemblage of people gone to sea." 10
As historian James Delgado showed in his seminal To California by Sea: A Maritime
History of the California Gold Rush, the strike at Sutter's Mill had tremendous maritime
implications. Namely, it integrated the Pacific territories with the rest of the United States
in a new and more intimate manner. Prior to the gold rush, the territories of California and
Oregon were cut-off and far removed from happenings in the Midwest or on the Atlantic
seaboard. Now, they were closely connected. In 1847, Congress agreed to establish and
subsidize a mail service to bind the Pacific coast to the rest of the country, a need made
manifest by the Mexican War. The service would operate in two legs: one would link
New York and other eastern ports with Chagres, on the Atlantic coast of Panama. 11 After
an overland mule-and-canoe portage covering the forty or so miles of thick underbrush
7 Fittingly, news of that event was transmitted to California by the Pacific Mail steamer Oregon, which
trumpeted the news from its banner upon arriving on October 18, 1850.
8 Of course, emigrants from Europe or Asia had no choice but to venture to California via maritime routes.
Oscar Lewis, Sea Routes to the Gold Fields: The Migration by Water to California in 1849-1852 (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1949).
9 One observer described the typical Argonaut as a "brave, thoughtless lad . . . bound for a hard, alien life.
Death and disease claimed them in every port and their wreckage marked every league of the 17,000
miles of their journey." Quoted in Bill Bonyun and Gene Bonyun, Full Hold and Splendid Passage:
America Goes to Sea, 1815-1860 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969, 160.
10 Quoted in J. S. Hittell, A History of the City of San Francisco (San Francisco, 1878), 131-32.
11 Alternate routes, such as via Cape Horn or overland from the Midwest were dismissed as being too time-
consuming or dangerous. For Cape Horn, see Raymond A. Rydell, Cape Horn to the Pacific (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1952).
70
The Gold Rush
and sometimes impassable rivers, the journey was completed via a steamship connection
between Panama City and San Francisco, often with intervening stops at ports such as
San Bias, Manzanillo, or Acapulco. That route, maintained by the Pacific Mail Steamship
Company (PMSSC), was granted to William H. Aspinwall and associates, of the firm of
Howland and Aspinwall, while the Atlantic leg was operated by the United States Mail
Steamship Company (the two rivals would merge in 1851). 12 At an initial cost to taxpayers of
$199,000 per annum (raised to $348,250 per annum in 1852, the first of several adjustments),
one can see how highly valued was a communications connection with the Pacific coast. The
owners, operators, and investors of these companies could not have asked for a more propi-
tious turn of events: from the outset of the discovery of gold in California, conditions were
radically different from what the company expected. The Pacific Mail side-paddlewheel
steamers California, Oregon, and Panama, ranging between 1,050 and 1,100 tons, slipped
down the ways and into service at almost the same time word of the gold strike was reach-
ing the ears of eager Americans. Departing New York on October 6, 1848, the first PMSSC
ship arrived on the Pacific coast port of Panama City in mid-January of the following year,
deluged by hordes of gold-seekers then descending on that region. 13 When California arrived
in San Francisco on February 28, 1849, she disembarked 365 passengers, several times her
design capacity: her entire crew of 34, with the exception of the captain and an assistant
engineer, fled for the goldfields. 14 One correspondent described the scene:
The California is truly a magnificent vessel, and her fine appearance as she came in
sight of the town called forth cheer after cheer from her enraptured citizens, who
were assembled in masses, upon the heights commanding a view of the bay and in
dense crowds at the principal wharves and landing places. She passed the vessels of
war in the harbor under a salute from each, returned by hearty cheering from the
crowded decks and was safely moored at the anchorage off the town. 15
It was clear that the PMSSC would need more than their initial trio of vessels to serve
this vast new clientele. Soon, an entire flotilla of ships, growing to eighteen in just five years
and nearly two dozen by 1869, began service. The vessels included Unicorn (purchased from
British interests), Tennessee (removed from service as a coastal steam packet on the Gulf
Coast), and the 2,100-ton Golden Gate (a 270-foot vessel lost with 233 lives in a spectacular
12 When the contract was finally signed on November 16, 1847, it was originally awarded to a Tennessee poli-
tician who had secured passage of the bill. He held it for three days before selling it to Aspinwall in what
can only be described as "business as usual" for mid-nineteenth century politicians. On Aspinwall, see
Duncan S. Somerville, The Aspinwall Empire (Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1983). On Pacific Mail,
see Stephen J. Potash and Robert J. Chandler, Gold, Silk, Pioneers, and Mail: The Story of the Pacific Mail
Steamship Company (San Francisco: Friends of the San Francisco Maritime Museum Library, 2007); and
John Haskell Kemble, "A Hundred Years of Pacific Mail," American Neptune, 10 (1950): 123-43.
13 California and Panama, built by William Webb, and Oregon, built by Stephen Smith and John Dimon, all
ran about 220 feet, with a 34-foot beam. They featured accommodations for 75, from first class to steerage.
14 California carried a second set of engine parts on her inaugural run, anticipating that such compo-
nents would be unavailable at any point on the Pacific Coast. Victor M. Berthold, The Pioneer Steamer
California: 1848-1849 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932).
15 Daily Alta California, February 28, 1849.
71
The Gold Rush
1862 wreck). 16 The 1,200-ton twins Republic and Northerner and smaller craft such as
Columbia, Antelope, Carolina, Columbus, Fremont, and Isthmus rounded out the fleet. By
first supplementing and then supplanting the mail service as their primary raison d'etre, the
steamers, charging $200 for steerage and $315 for first-class passengers, and $100 per ton
for freight, were able to bring investors handsome annual returns. 17 In 1850, PMSSC paid its
first dividend at 50 percent; returns hovered near 20 percent for the next few years, and aver-
aged between 10 percent and 30 percent per annum until after the Civil War. 18 Opponents of
federal subsidies would not forget these figures, and competitors also took notice.
Despite cries that the government should not underwrite the cost of a private
venture, Pacific Mail prospered and soon developed several competitors. Despite merging
with the US Mail Steamship Company in 1851, the PMSSC faced serious competition from
such upstarts as the Empire City Line (1850), the New York and San Francisco Steamship
Line (1852), and the Central American Transit Company (1862-1868). In fact, there were
not many months that Pacific Mail did not find itself in more or less active war with these
rivals. 19 None, however, posed as large a threat as Cornelius Vanderbilt's Nicaragua Transit
Company (1851-1865). The self-proclaimed Commodore opened the Atlantic and Pacific
Steamship Line in 1851. By the following year, he operated seven steamers — including the
original trio of Prometheus, Independence, and Pacific — on that route (though longer than
the Panama route, Nicaragua had a better climate, and the presence of Lake Nicaragua
made water transportation — rather than wagon train or mule pack — possible for most of
its length). In its first half decade in operation, the Nicaraguan route saw business steadily
increase, with 4,971 Argonauts opting for Vanderbilt's route in 1851, 17,403 in 1852, and
nearly 24,000 — or almost 50 percent of all isthmian traffic — in 1853. Unfortunately for
Vanderbilt, a reputation for poor service (the line lost several vessels in high-profile acci-
dents) and an unstable political situation in Nicaragua (aggravated by American filibusters
such as William Walker) eroded many of these gains, and by 1856, fewer than 8,000 of the
nearly 40,000 isthmian travelers opted for his route. 20 Despite these issues, Vanderbilt was
16 The SS Tennessee was wrecked on March 6, 1853, four miles north of the Golden Gate in Marin County.
See Fred Stocking, "How We Gave a Name to Tennessee Cove," Overland Monthly Yl (April 1893): 351-57.
Golden Gate, with room for 800 passengers, set the record for speed, covering 290 nautical miles in one
day, averaging more than 12 knots, but consuming more than 60 tons of coal. She went down off the
Mexican coast on June 27, 1862.
17 Mail delivery remained an important component of the company's business, and steamer arrivals excited
considerable enthusiasm. TheAlta California of August 28, 1854, remarked that "the people of California
and San Francisco seem to count time from Steamer Day to Steamer Day." On September 29, 1864, Golden
Age arrived with some 70,000 pieces of mail, the "largest ever received on the Pacific Coast" according to
that day's Alta California. As late as December 19, 1865, that same journal noted, "Steamer Day is still a
great event . . . people spend the night before writing letters."
18 Potash and Chandler, Gold, Silk, Pioneers and Mail, 9.
19 Of these, most were forced into ruin. Between 1848 and 1851, at least 36,097 made their way to California
via the isthmian routes. In the two decades following the discovery of gold, 808,769 crossed the isthmus.
Delgado, To California By Sea, x.
20 The real draw of the isthmian crossing — with a four-hour transit utilizing some 47.5 miles of railroad
tracks — was in the return voyage, since few who came to California via the Horn or overland returned
that way. Construction of the railroad was said to have claimed 6,000 lives, or "one for every wooden
railroad tie laid." On the isthmian route, from a firsthand perspective, see Olive Colegrove Cole, "To
California via Panama in 1852," Annual Publications of the Historical Society of Southern California 9
(1914): 163-72; and James Miller Guinn, "To California via Panama in the early '60s," Annual Publications
of the Historical Society of Southern California 5 (1900): 13-21.
72
The Gold Rush
able to wrangle concession from Pacific Mail to the tune of $56,000 per month to guarantee
that he would not open competing lines on the Panama route. 21
Prospective miners had a number of options to get them to the goldfields. The afore-
mentioned overland trek was long (a typical crossing averaged six months and could take as
long as eight to cover the 2,000 miles between St. Louis and San Francisco) and dangerous
(hostile natives, the risk of dysentery and other illnesses, drought and starvation). Maritime
routes were clearly a better, though more expensive, option. The first routes to be devel-
oped were the runs around Cape Horn. Departing in winter (so that the perilous crossing
would occur in the southern hemisphere's summer) the 13,328-mile sea route could take
as long as two hundred days. The oceanographic and meteorological knowledge passed
on by Matthew Fontaine Maury, a US Navy scientist who compiled statistics from tens of
thousands of whaling and commercial voyages, reduced this time by some two months.
Advancements in naval architecture — particularly the development of the clipper hull —
would shave another forty to fifty days off the run, but the voyage was a costly financial
venture. Those with the funds to spare got to the diggings in relative speed (and comfort if
they upgraded their accommodations) compared to the terrestrial gold seekers, who were
more likely to be from the lowest socioeconomic realm. Others could take a combined sea-
terrestrial journey, shipping from East Coast or Gulf Coast ports for various ports in Latin
America and continuing overland to the Pacific. From here, getting to "the city" (and that
was all one had to say to be guaranteed delivery to San Francisco) entailed another mari-
time leg, usually by steamer to California. Participants raved about the speed: "We was only
eight days from New York [on the Moses Taylor] to our first landing place the Isthmus, and
met with good luck to take the railroad cars in three hours or a little more, and in about four
hours we got across the isthmus to Panama, where we got rite on the boat [Golden Gate] and
sailed rite through without delay." 22 The 500 passengers made this journey in twenty-one
days, twenty-two-and-a-half hours, from wharf to wharf, being the shortest passage made
from New York. 23
While the overland portage was slow and tedious, with illness (yellow fever,
diphtheria, and other tropical diseases), animal attack (jaguar, alligator), and other dangers
(highway robbers and unscrupulous agents), the time elapsed could be as much as two-
thirds less than that spent in a voyage around the Horn, with the combined 5,000 miles
covered in some three weeks. Many were stranded in places as varied as Mexico, Panama,
and Nicaragua, awaiting transit to the goldfields; many an impoverished prospector
abandoned hope of ever seeing California and turned instead to providing services — hotels,
saloons, and the like — to others in a better position to continue the voyage. 24 In some cases,
desperate Argonauts agreed to pay for their passage by working aboard San Francisco-
bound ships; others, despondent by their chances, chose a life of crime or ended their days
in the dismal surroundings where they found themselves.
21 By 1860, Pacific Mail had bought Vanderbilt's West Coast steamers, though he continued to run his
Atlantic fleet until his retirement in 1865. On the Nicaragua route, see David I. Folkman, Jr., The
Nicaragua Route (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1972).
22 Cited in Potash and Chandler, Gold, Silk, Pioneers and Mail, 4.
23 Daily Alta California, February 27, 1858.
24 John M. Letts, California Illustrated; Including a Description of the Panama and Nicaragua Routes, (New
York: R. T. Young, 1853), 134. The best treatment of the Panama Route remains John Haskell Kemble,
The Panama Route (1943; reprint, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999).
73
The Gold Rush
To meet the demands for shipping needed to bring prospectors, entrepreneurs,
and others to California, it seemed that any and every vessel from Maine to Texas was
pressed into service. A motley collection of ships, barks, brigs, schooners, and steamers
that included many older vessels languishing for lack of trade and a good many rotting
and condemned hulks — "less than stout and without the bloom of youth" — were comman-
deered. 25 In addition to this assorted flotsam of ships that could barely be kept afloat was
added a large number of relatively new vessels, the construction of which harkened a boom-
ing maritime economy for the shipyards of New York, Boston, and Mystic, among other
New England or Middle Atlantic yards. Fishing schooners and whaleships were hastily
converted and others were responsibly refit; by one estimate, 10 percent of the American
whale fishery was diverted into ferrying passengers and goods to California. The gold rush,
then, had far-reaching and deep implications for people across the nation and around the
globe, and virtually all of these traced their maritime connection to San Francisco.
One often-retold incident is that of the whaler Niantic, captained by Henry
Cleaveland of West Tilsbury, Martha's Vineyard. At 451 tons and 119 feet, the three-masted,
full-rigged ship was slow, bluff-bowed, and built "for great gain and no loss" for the firm of
Griswold and Company of New York in 1835. 26 Named for a tribe of Rhode Island Indians,
she was built of oak and pine at Chatham, Connecticut, by Thomas Child and was original-
ly designed for the China trade, carrying tea and silk from the Orient to New England. On
one voyage, her master, Captain Levy Doty became so ill that command of the ship passed
to Robert Bennett Forbes, originator of the China trade and scion of the great American
trading family. During the 150-day passage home, Forbes described Niantic as "rather
shaky, not fast, quite crank, and not over well found." 27 In other words, she was perfect for
the whale fishery.
Having fished the whaling grounds of the Atlantic since at least 1844, Niantic was
sold to Burr and Smith of Warren, Rhode Island, in 1847 and was on its maiden voyage to
the South Seas when it stopped in South America for refitting. Upon hearing of the gold
strike, Niantic hastened from its anchorage in Paita, Peru (where it had been transferred to
the Chilean registry), and headed to California. Before departing, she loaded 2,000 board
feet of lumber and assorted quantities of bedding and foodstuffs; converted underway, she
arrived at Panama on April 7. Cleaveland and his sons (who sailed as first, second, and third
mates) found thousands in search of passage to the goldfields, and many offered exorbitant
sums for tickets to California. Cleaveland recognized a good thing when he saw it, picking
up 249 passengers (whom he charged $150 for steerage and $250 for a cabin, on a strictly
first-come, first-served basis), converting the trypots into soup tureens, and proceeding to
San Francisco through the Golden Gate (sixty-six days later and having lost one passen-
ger to illness) on July 5, 1849. Among those who survived the passage were a future judge, a
minister, a craftsman, and four slaves and their masters, all of whom quickly made for the
Sierra foothills. They were not alone, as virtually all her crew deserted her as well.
With Niantic's crew gone to the Sierras, Cleaveland decided to run the ship aground
and offer it for sale. Advertisements were placed in the August 9 Alta California, and she
found a purchaser in Adolphe Mailliard and Samuel Ward, a pair of local real-estate
25 Delgado, To California by Sea, 24.
26 Delgado, "No Longer a Bouyant Ship," 322.
27 Delgado, "No Longer a Bouyant Ship," 323.
74
The Gold Rush
speculators. They had short cables placed under her keel and attached on either side to
large casks, partially filled with water. The liquid was gradually siphoned out and the casks
raised her a bit, and she floated well up onto the beach at the northwest corner of Clay
and Sansome Streets. Her masts removed, her ballast jettisoned, pilings were hammered
alongside the ship's starboard quarters to stabilize the structure; the ship's pump provided
access to a spring, which provided the "best water in San Francisco." Her side was pierced
with a door, above which hung a sign proclaiming, "Rest for the Weary and Storage of
Trunks." Exactly one month after posting of the ad announcing her sale, she opened for
business as a storeship and boardinghouse. Accessible on three sides by water (Maillaird
having purchased all the adjoining water lots), lighters continually streamed by the facility,
netting the owners some $20,000 per month. 28 British miner William Kelly described the
scene: "a fine vessel of 1000 tons was no longer a buoyant ship but a tenement anchored in
the mud, covered with a shingle roof, subdivided into stores and offices." 29 Niantic's fate was
not novel: by 1852, the harbormaster concluded that 164 ships served as permanent struc-
tures of the city's waterfront. 30 Indeed, many of the pioneer buildings in the city were ships
converted into floating warehouses, offices, or jails, or served in countless other capacities.
On May 4, 1851, the worst of four eventual fires consumed much of the city. Raging
until it ran out of fuel, the blaze destroyed Niantic's topsides and hull, destroyed solid (and
supposedly fireproof) walls, melted glass bottles, warped thick iron doors and shutters,
and claimed the lives of those who had run inside to escape the conflagration. (Subsequent
excavations in 1872 "turned up the floors and there was the hulk of the Niantic . . . replete
with 35 baskets of wine and champagne, still . . . of very fair flavor.") 31 The smoke was report-
edly seen over 100 miles away in Monterey, but it did not dissuade Ward and Maillaird from
their business. In less than five months, Niantic reopened, this time, as a hotel. The Daily
Herald described the new structure: "Its parlors are spacious and tastefully appointed while
the sleeping rooms are airy, neat, and pleasant. The structure will be amply supplied with
every substantial and luxury which the market affords, and the choicest wines and liquors
will always be found at the bar." 32 Regrettably, over the next two decades (and four owners),
the Niantic Hotel declined from this auspicious start and became the preferred destina-
tion of shady characters, criminal activities, and ne'er-do-wells associated with the Barbary
Coast. As the one that was drawn furthest inland from the original coastline, she remains
the most famous vessel of gold rush San Francisco, the most documented in both words and
images. Rediscovered in 1978, her remnants still lie beneath the redwood park that abuts
28 Early in its history, the site had housed a four-story reinforced concrete office building, built by Lorenzo
Scatena, a produce merchant and grandfather of A. P. Gianini, founder of the Bank of America. The 1906
earthquake and fire destroyed that structure; an undated newspaper article thought to be from about
1915 erroneously reported that there was nothing left of Niantic, as did a bronze plaque erected in 1918
by the Native Sons of the Golden West. Isabel Bullen, "A Glimpse into the Niantic's Hold," California
History 58, no. 4 (1980): 326-33.
29 William Kelly, A Stroll through the Diggings of California (London: Simms and M'Intyre, 1852), 177.
30 William H. Pickens, "A Marvel of Nature; The Harbor of Harbors,' Public Policy and the Development
of San Francisco Bay, 1846-1926" (PhD diss., University of California, Davis, 1976), 17.
31 See James P. Delgado and Russell B. Frank, "A Gold Rush Enterprise: Samuel Ward, Charles Mersch,
Adolphe Maillard, and the Niantic Storeship," Huntington Library Quarterly 46, no. 4 (Autumn 1983):
321-30. See also Mary Hildermann Smith, "An Interpretative Study of the Collection Recovered from the
Storeship Niantic" (master's thesis, San Francisco State University, 1981).
32 San Francisco Daily Herald, October 4, 1851.
75
The Gold Rush
San Francisco's iconic TransAmerica building. 33 Niantic, like other submerged cultural
resources, offers an opportunity to more accurately assess the historical milieu that is mari-
time San Francisco. Devoid of biases and perspectives, her cargo holds reveal a moment
captured in time, a moment that allows contemporary scholars to better understand the
role that shipping and commerce played in earlier days. Far more than staid textbooks
or static displays in dusty museums, artifacts such as Niantic allow twenty-first century
observers to better appreciate the past.
The rush to California was clearly one of the reasons why the period from 1815 to
1860 has been declared the "golden age of American maritime history," leading to one of the
most dramatic and iconic images of all American history, the clipper ship. Clippers repre-
sented the apex of American seafaring at a time of tremendous interest in that activity in
the United States. 34 Described as being virtually built for San Francisco and the gold rush,
the clipper was uniquely well designed and situated for the run around Cape Horn from
the East Coast. 35 While there were fast ships in operation before the clippers burst onto the
scene, they were all small (the average tonnage of vessels in San Francisco Bay in 1850 being
274); by comparison, Flying Cloud, launched on April 15, 1851, was 1,782 tons. Vessels that
entered through the Golden Gate with any commodity then in short supply commanded
fabulous prices, and so-called Yankee clippers often paid for themselves in just one trip.
With eggs selling for a dollar apiece and whiskey fetching $40 a quart, there was a definite
advantage in getting to California quickly. Experience showed that the most profitable type
of vessel was a large, fast, full-rigged ship available for carrying cargoes to San Francisco,
then (in ballast) to China for tea to London or New York. The clippers delivered on all
counts. At a time when the average passage around Cape Horn was 182 days, they accom-
plished it in 130.
Employed in long-distance trade, the clippers would be a short-lived phenomenon;
their small cargo capacity offset by the cost of maintaining an absurdly large crew needed
to handle the ship. With a large sail area — including studding sails, water sails, and other
33 The remains were first discovered by workmen who struck the remains of the ship on April 28, 1978.
At that time, only 90 of her 120 feet were explored. James P. Delgado, "No Longer a Buoyant Ship:
Unearthing the Gold Rush Storeship Niantic," California History 58, no. 4 (Winter 1979/1980): 316-25.
For all her notoriety, Niantic was by no means the only well-known "beached ship." See, for example,
James P. Delgado, "Ships as Buildings in Gold Rush San Francisco," Mariner's Museum Journal, second
series, no. 1 (1995): 4-13. On December 17, 1849, the 627-ton Arkansas, launched in 1833, entered the
Bay after a lengthy voyage from New York (she had departed that city on June 26). With 107 passengers
and 16 crew, her 145-foot-long decks were crowded; but soon emptied as all made off for the Sierras.
Beached at Pacific and Battery she was purchased by Henry Klee, and "her forecastle was used as a
tavern ... a door cut bluff in the bow admitted the thirsty. In three paces you step from the street into
her foc'sle . . . the ale served on draught was unequalled in the city, whilst the liquors were the purest
and best" (David Hull, "The Old Ship Saloon: A Door in Her Bow Admitted the Thirsty," American West
[1974]: 22-23.
34 As an example, in 1848, the American clipper Memnon had passed the steamship Europe during a passage
to Liverpool, garnering much publicity and great fanfare; in 1851, the yacht America won the Royal Yacht
Squadron Cup, while the Collins liners were shattering speed records across the Atlantic, much to the
dismay of their rivals, Cunard. See John A. Butler, Atlantic Kingdom: America's Contest with Cunardin
the Age of Sail and Steam (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 2001). Other manifestations of maritime activity
during this time can be found in the growing network of inland waterways, and the continuing increase
in coastwise trade and travel.
35 Of the estimated 10,000 runs around Cape Horn from the East Coast to the West, only 26 were accom-
plished in less than 100 days. See Nicholas Dean, Snow Squall: The Last American Clipper (Gardner, ME:
Tilbury House Publishers, 2001).
76
The Gold Rush
accoutrements designed to catch every available breeze — passages dropped from 125 days
to 89.5, a record that the stately Andrew Jackson kept for nearly 150 years. Their design,
a modification of blockade runners developed along the Chesapeake and northern New
England coasts during the Jeffersonian Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812, allowed for
speeds routinely surpassing twenty knots, and California-bound clippers set the record for
most nautical miles covered in a twenty-four-hour period. Possessing fine-lined hulls and
emphasizing streamlined shape, clippers were known for featuring miles of line and acres
of canvas. With a long bowsprit and a keel that knifed through the water, clippers sacrificed
carrying capacity for speed. With poetic names (Herald of the Morning, Witch of the Wave,
Sovereign of the Seas), sharp lines and consummate seamanship, they captured the public
imagination. As Samuel Elliot Morrison, doyen of American maritime historians, put it:
Never, in these United States, has the brain of man conceived, or the hand of man fash-
ioned, so perfect a thing as the clipper ship. In her, the long-suppressed artistic impulse of
a practical hard-worked race burst into flower . . . but they were monuments carved from
snow . . . for a brief moment of time they flashed their splendor around the world, then
disappeared with a sudden completeness." 36
The speed clippers attained was often phenomenal and the subject of intense debate.
In December 1854, Champion of the Seas claimed to run 465 nautical miles in 24 hours (aver-
aging 19 knots); others were equally impressive: Lightning (19 knots); Great Republic (19
knots); Defiance (20 knots) and Sovereign of the Seas (22 knots). 37 Yet theirs was an ephemer-
al history. The clippers were never numerous (from 1843 to 1855 American shipyards turned
out 2,656 vessels, only 256 of which were clippers), and their span was brief. The era of the
clipper ship can be said to commence with the maiden voyage of Sea Witch in 1846 (a trip
that took her around the Horn to California in under 100 days) and her wreck on a Cuban
reef in 1856 marking its end.(Some historians point to the launching of the appropriately
named Twilight the following year as the true endpoint.)
The story of the 2,000-ton Challenge is illustrative. Promised a $10,000 bonus if he
could deliver his cargo to San Francisco in less than ninety days, Captain Robert Waterman
was understandably determined to make haste for California. Featuring skysail yards at 200
feet above the waterline and a 160 -foot spread of canvas (some 60 feet beyond the rails on
each side), the clipper was well designed to meet the three-month threshold. Regrettably,
the lack of experienced sailors — many had already abandoned the blue seas for the gold
hills — meant that Waterman was relying on a young and green crew to accomplish this
task. Undeterred, the captain believed he could teach his charges by instilling fear. When
Challenge arrived in San Francisco in 108 days, the master was brought up on charges of
cruelty and eventually tried for murder. This experience was not uncommon. A letter to the
New York Tribune revealed this:
36 Samuel Elliot Morison, Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 (New York: Houghton Mifflin,
1921), 370-71. On clipper ship construction and the yards that built these craft, consult Edwin L.
Dunbaugh and William DuBarry Thomas, William H. Webb: Shipbuilder (Glen Cove, NY: Webb Institute
of Naval Architecture, 1989). An excellent source is William L. Crothers, The American-Built Clipper
Ship, 1850-1856: Characteristics, Construction, and Details (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000).
37 For a good treatment of clippers, see Melvin A. Conant, Heralds of Their Age (New York: South Street
Seaport Museum, 1972); and C. C. Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea: The Story of the American Clipper
Ships (New York: Naval Institute Press, 1930). See also Michael Jay Mjelde, Clipper Ship Captain: Daniel
McLaughlin and the Glory of the Seas (Palo Alto, CA: Glencannon Press, 1997).
77
The Gold Rush
Such a set of sailors as this there never was before in any ship in this wide world . . . out
of 56 men, only 10 Americans. There are 12 Englishmen, 20 Irishmen, 5 Dutchmen, 4
Frenchmen, 3Italians, 1 Swede, 1 Russian. Now, maybe you wouldn't believe it, but I tell
you it is the honest truth, out of the 10 Americans, 7 of them are boys . . . we have lost 8 men.
Three fell overboard and five died since; there were 17 sick at one time. When we get to San
Francisco, I expect that all of our crew will leave and run away 38
Most clippers, incidentally, carried few passengers, as the high fares more than
offset the advantages to be gained by getting to California quicker than competitors. In
the six-month period between June and December 1852, the eleven clippers calling at San
Francisco averaged but five passengers, and none would ever call therewith more than 67
aboard. What the clipper did offer was a guarantee that high-duty freight would arrive at
its destination clean and in good order. Despite freight rates running as high as $15 per ton,
square-riggers continued to control the intercoastal cargo business until the turn of the
twentieth century — though not at such high freight rates — when steamers and eventually
transcontinental railroads, replaced them as models of elegance and efficiency
The news of the gold discovery brought newfound interest in California. Whereas
previous American curiosity was reserved for the military or the odd fur or hide trader,
now there was widespread fascination in the region. Walter Colton, mayor of Monterey,
wrote to a colleague in Philadelphia, taunting that, "while your streets have minnows,
ours are paved with gold." Relating the allure that the Sierra goldfields held for the
residents of his city, young and old, healthy and infirm, Colton added: "the blacksmith
dropped his hammer, the carpenter his plane, the mason his trowel, the farmer his sickle,
the baker his loaf, and the tapster his bottle ... all were off for the mines. Some rode
horses, others carts . . . some were on crutches and one was in a litter." 39 A cursory look at
shipping lists and assorted data and statistics proves this: on December 1, 1848, New York
newspapers carried advertisements for 6 vessels destined for San Francisco. 40 Less than
two weeks later (and just one week after President Polk's proclamation) that number had
risen to 27. For the year ending December 1, 1849, some 762 sailing vessels cleared East
Coast ports for the goldfields, while New York, with 214, would send the most ships to San
Francisco, she was joined by virtually every other port of appreciable size: Philadelphia,
Boston, New Orleans, Baltimore, New Bedford, and dozens more sent ships to California.
Two hundred forty two ships, 218 barks, 170 brigs, 132 schooners, and 15 steamers
replaced the 8 that had departed from Atlantic ports for the Golden Gate in the previ-
ous year. While domestic clearances dominated, an increasing number of foreign flags
entered the Bay: in the first nine months of 1849, only 36 vessels cleared foreign ports for
San Francisco; in the same period in 1850, that number had risen to 165, with most — 93 —
coming from Great Britain. Other Argonauts came from points as far away as Australia,
Chile, China, and France, ushering in a new wave of global economics in California.
The number of vessels calling at San Francisco rose from trickle to deluge. From
64 in April 1849 to 240 in August and September, the port saw 775 vessels call that year,
and on one February day in 1850, more than two dozen vessels called (one Sacramento
38 New York Tribune, December 3, 1851.
39 Walter Colton, The Land of Gold, or, Three Years in California, 1846-1849 (New York: A. S. Barnes and
Company, 1850), 54.
40 Among these was the steamship Falcon.
78
The Gold Rush
correspondent placed the number of arrivals at San Francisco for the twenty-month period
ending October 1, 1850, at an astounding 1,031). An 1850 report listed San Francisco fifth
in tonnage for vessel arrivals and ninth for vessel departures, attesting both to the mete-
oric growth of the port and its newly expanded role in global commerce; by 1851, it was the
fourth-largest port in the United States with respect to the value of its foreign trade. 41 By
1861, San Francisco ranked sixth among all US ports in total freight handled, and within a
half decade the port boasted of handling nearly a half-million tons of cargo. 42
By October, a forest of masts arose from the waters of San Francisco Bay, as crews
joined passengers in pursuit of a quick fortune. As early as June 1849, more than 200 salt-
caked and weed-befouled vessels lay abandoned in the graveyard of ships that transformed
the mudflats off San Francisco; by June of 1850 — a month that saw 85 vessels arrive in the
port — that number had more than doubled. 43 When his ship reached the bay in 1849, Henry
Hiram Ellis of Maine recalled, "the harbor was full of abandoned vessels . . . master and
crews had gone to the mines." 44 Edward Lucett, a merchant-author who arrived in October
1849, noted "not a vessel in San Francisco possesses its full complement of men Mine
all quitted as soon as it suited their convenience, and we were compelled to hire others
at $5 per day" 45 By the following July, 526 ships sat idle in San Francisco Bay. Most never
sailed again, stripped of their rigging and serving as warehouses, storeships, and churches
(anchored off the Sacramento Street wharf, the ship Panama served as the Bethel Methodist
Episcopal chapel. Founded by the Reverend William Taylor, it was later towed to dry land
on Mission Street between First and Second Streets). Others were transformed to offices,
saloons, hotels, and in one case, that of the packet C. R. Daly, a floating brothel with accom-
modations for fifty prostitutes and their customers. 46 Not all such edifices were dedicated to
salacious ends: the brig Euphemia, was transformed to a city jail. 47 At 90 feet and 137 tons,
Euphemia was purchased for $3,000 from local politico William Heath Davis. Anchored
near the Central Wharf (the current intersection of Battery and Sacramento Streets, near
the Federal Reserve) it was supposed to relieve overcrowding in the extant city jails, but
proved scarcely better. A contemporary report noted that shortly after its opening "the brig
is literally filled with prisoners. If any more were incarcerated, it would rival the infamous
41 Report on Commerce and Navigation, 1850. For the year ending April 1, 1851, 1,250 vessels, carrying
550,000 tons of cargo called at San Francisco; three years earlier, the figures had been 84 and 50,000.
42 Robert W. Cherny and William Issel, San Francisco: Presidio, Port, and Pacific Metropolis (San Francisco:
Boyd and Fraser, 1981), 11.
43 By November, there were 452 vessels (242 of which were American) and an additional 148 storeships
along the San Francisco waterfront. Dozens of other storeships could be found moored at smaller land-
ings such as Benicia, Stockton, and Sacramento. San Francisco Daily Alta California, November 1, 1851.
44 Henry Hiram Ellis, From the Kennebec to California: Reminiscences of a California Pioneer, ed. Laurence
R. Cook (Los Angeles: W. F. Lewis, 1959), 13.
45 Edward Lucett, Rovings in the Pacific, from 1837 to 1849; with a Glance ay California (By a Merchant Long
Resident in Tahiti), 2 vols. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851), 2:352.
46 Rod E. Redman, "The Barbary Coast: San Francisco's Bawdy Paradise," Sea Classics (December 2004): 37-42.
47 The same vessel would later serve as "a receptacle for the insane" (James R Delgado, "Gold Rush Jail:
The Prison Ship Euphemia," California History 60, no. 2 [Summer 1991]: 134-41, quotation on 136). See
also "Gold Rush Ships in Levi's Plaza" Historical Archaeological Investigation, 1980, which revealed
nine ships near Pier 19, in the triangle between the Embarcadero, Battery, and Vallejo Streets. To date,
archaeologists have identified the exact of proximate location of the remains of forty-two vessels that
can be traced to the gold-rush period. For a comprehensive treatment of gold-rush era craft moored in
San Francisco harbor, see Albert Harmon, Harlan Soeten, and Karl Kortum, Notes on the Gold Rush Ships
(San Francisco: San Francisco Maritime Museum, 1963).
79
The Gold Rush
black hole of Calcutta." 48 A second vessel, Waban, was operated by the State of California in
the adjacent waters, eventually being beached at Black Point Cove. A contemporary observ-
er described the startling scene:
It looks very curious in passing along some of the streets bordering on the water
to see the stern of a ship with her name and the place from which she hails painted
upon it, and her stern posts staring directly at you on the street. These ships, now
high and dry, were hauled in about a year as storeships, before the building was
carried on in that section of the city in so rapid a manner, and now find them-
selves out of their natural element and a part of the streets of a great city 49
While most newcomers headed straight for the Sierra Nevadas, enough stayed to
transform San Francisco into an instant city. A Bostonian who sailed through the Golden
Gate aboard Velasco in September 1849 noted, "The ships in the harbor look like a cedar
swamp . . . more arrive every day; I went up the masthead and tried to count them but they
were so thick I found it impossible." 50 William Heath Davis described the waterfront as
"composed of eight to nine hundred vessels, anchored between Clark's Point and the
Rincon, presenting a very striking picture, like an immense forest stripped of its foliage." 51
With increased vessel arrivals came a corresponding spike in population: from 2,000
in February 1849, to 3,000 in March, 5,000 in July, 12,000 in October, and nearly 40,000 by
spring 1850. San Francisco moved from port to city, becoming the largest city west of St.
Louis. Likewise, the population of California mushroomed from 15,000 in 1847 to nearly
100,000 (92,497) in 1850 and more than quadrupled again (379,994) by the eve of the Civil
War. The city developed to serve the port: warehouses, fuel facilities, industries, busi-
nessmen, and laborers were all needed to feed the insatiable demands of a port grown to
prodigious dimensions. It was clear that city fathers and municipal officials would have to
somehow meet the needs of these newcomers.
To meet these various demands, city fathers undertook a variety of steps. To create
enough space for the ships and their passengers, and to generate revenue for the city,
they decided to survey and sell water and beach lots, "at public auction and to the highest
48 San Francisco Daily Alta California, August 4, 1850.
49 San Francisco Daily Alta California, April 12, 1851. The San Francisco Prices Current and Shipping List
listed 164 storeships by July 7, 1852.
50 Thomas Reid, "Diary of a Voyage to California in the Bark Velasco," October 9, 1849, Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley.
51 Quoted in James P. Delgado, Gold Rush Port: The Maritime Archaeology of San Francisco (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2009), 138. Excellent work done on the extensive maritime archaeology
of San Francisco includes Allen G. Pastron and Eugene M. Hattori, eds., The Hoff Store Site and Gold
Rush Merchandise from San Francisco, California (Ann Arbor: Society for Historical Archaeology, 1990);
William Self Associates, Down She Went: A Report on the Excavation and Analysis of the Gold Rush-Era
Ship Rome, San Francisco, California, submitted to the Department of Planning, City and County of
San Francisco (Orinda, CA: William Self Associates, 1986); Allen G. Pastron, Jack Prichett, and Marilyn
Zeibarth, eds., Behind the Seawall: Historical Archaeology along the San Francisco Waterfront, 4 Vols. (San
Francisco: San Francisco Clean Water Program, 1981); and James P. Delgado, Rhonda K. Robichaud,
and Allen G. Pastron, "This Fine and Commodious Vessel": Archaeological Investigation of the Gold Rush
Storeship General Harrison (Oakland: Archeo-Tec, 2007).
80
The Gold Rush
bidder . . . for the benefit of the town of San Francisco." 52 On March 16, Edwin Bryant,
alcalde of San Francisco, published a notice that water lots in Yerba Buena cove, including
35 blocks now occupied for business between Broadway and Folsom Streets, would be sold
at auction to the highest bidder on June 29. Divided into 444 lots (measuring 137 Vi feet by
46 feet), the program was successful (an additional 328 lots laid out in 1850) but contro-
versial. 53 An additional 137,000 acres of tidelands — the lands between high- and low-water
lines — would be sold for $1 an acre beginning in 1855. In all cases, winning bidders scuttled
ships and used parts of Telegraph and Russian Hills to fill in their lots, much to the chagrin
of neighboring business owners who now saw their own wharves become unusable. The
"steam paddy," a prototypical steam shovel, assisted in this process. Pile drivers operated
day and night, as piers and bulkheads reached out to enclose the water lots. Waterfront rela-
tions were extremely volatile during this time. Fred Lawson later revealed to reporters how
he operated his business in a scene that approached open warfare. Describing how he scut-
tled both Elizabeth and Rome (amid bouts of gunfire) to serve as substrate, he then turned to
his handling of Noble.
When I sunk her, the Pacific Wharf Company objected so strongly that we
made a sort of compromise, and I brought in the Hardie to help extricate the
Noble The company furnished the men for the work and besides their pay
they received all the free drinks they wanted The first day the tide was too
low to move her, and on the second day a storm came up and some way, the little
Hardie had to sink . . . and that settled my title to the property. 54
The process, while environmentally destructive, was ingenious. Wharves extended
out from shallow mudflats to deeper parts of the bay, reaching ships that no longer had to
be accessed by lightering. No longer hemmed in by the surrounding sandhills, the city's
graded landscape was perfect for building warehouses and other necessary buildings. At
once, developers created valuable real estate and a deepwater port. In all, some 21 million
cubic yards of fill were added to the bay; an even greater quantity would make its way into
the water after the introduction of hydraulic mining operations in the Sierras. 55 At the same
time that these hulk undertakers were going about their business, a large number of ships
were dismantled by ship-breakers such as Charles Hare, whose yard (located near today's
Spear Street) employed dozens of Chinese laborers, and which was part of a fascinating
52 Gerald R. Dow, "Bay Fill of San Francisco: A History of Change" (master's thesis, San Francisco
State University, 1973). For a comprehensive look at the process in other municipalities, see Nancy S.
Seasholes, Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).
53 In 1851, Congress transferred ownership of all "swamplands and tidelands" to the states. The San
Francisco-controlled state legislature subsequently transferred these to the city — with title to revert to
the State of California in one hundred years — to sell to pay civic debts.
54 San Francisco Examiner, August 3, 1890.
55 By one estimate, 1.5 billion cubic yards was added to San Francisco Bay via hydraulic mining. An
additional 8 million pounds of mercury were added to this toxic slurry. At some points, such as the
Sacramento River, channel depths were decreased by as much as 13 feet, and across the Bay, depths
were changed by an average of 3 feet. Robert Kelley, Gold vs. Grain: The Hydraulic Mining Controversy in
California's Sacramento Valley (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1959).
81
The Gold Rush
industry that recycled some 200 ships. 56
In summer 1849, after several false starts, entrepreneurs built the first wharf bridg-
ing the shallows of the cove (Yerba Buena cove was still a stagnant pond of thick, foul mud
at low tide, with a variable depth of between 6 and 18 feet). This wharf enhanced the value
of the remainder of the block, as the Central Wharf Stock Company, formed in April 1849,
raised over $100,000 in a matter of days. By the first week of May, the company adver-
tised for proposals to build the 36-foot-wide, 700-foot-long wharf. By August 31, the Alta
California reported that "piles for its support have been driven for a distance of over three
hundred feet, and about half that distance is already completed and planked." 57 Three
weeks later, that same organ reported that "work has so far progressed as to admit small
vessels and scows coming alongside." 58 A shortage of warehouses led to a frenzied pace of
construction as local water-lot owners scrambled to build structures capable of protecting
the millions of dollars of cargo landing daily on the beaches, stacked along the piers. One
awestruck observer reported:
I was lost in wonder and astonishment at the unparalleled rapidity of the rising
of a city . . . nearly one half the city was built on extensive wharfs, and still the
sounding and falling weight of piledrivers, axe, hammer, and saw was heard
everywhere employed by speculators in water lots. Immediately after the
completion of a few yards of wharf, a frame house was built upon it, shaking and
trembling in its foundations the piles, at the passing of a vehicle or horse; and
was immediately occupied by provision and clothing dealers, and liquor vendors
and gamblers. All the commercial business was conducted on the wharfs. 59
By December 1850, more than a million dollars was spent to build nine wharves
ranging from 250 to 975 feet (total wharfage equaled 6,000 feet). The extensions included
Long Wharf (2,000 feet); Market Street Wharf (600 feet); California Street Wharf (400
feet) and Cunningham's Wharf (375 feet, with a 330 -by-30 -foot T extension at its end),
which added 2 miles of pedestrian boardwalk to the waterfront. "The wharves and docks
are such immense structures that one can hardly find words to describe their extent and
importance," remarked Prussian-born Frank Lecouvreur upon seeing the waterfront in the
1850s. 60 Another European visitor, Etienne Derbic, commented, "the city's developments
have been extensive . . . the city has expanded over the water in regular sections, and one day
San Francisco, like Venice, will see its streets plowed by innumerable boats, and ships of all
56 James P. Delgado, "What Becomes of the Old Ships?: Dismantling the Gold Rush Fleet of San
Francisco," Pacific Historian 25, no. 4 (Winter 1981): 1-9. See also Allen G. Pastron and James P. Delgado,
"Archaeological Investigations at a Mid-19" 1 Century Shipbreaking Yard, San Francisco, California,"
Historical Archaeology 25, no. 2 (1991): 61-77; and William Self Associates, Final Archaeological Resources
Report, 300 Spear Street Project, San Francisco, California, submitted to the Department of Planning, City
and County of San Francisco (Orinda, CA: William Self Associates, 2006).
57 Daily Alta California, August 31, 1849.
58 Daily Alta California, September 20, 1849.
59 Cited in Edward Morphy, The Port of San Francisco (Sacramento: Board of State Harbor Commissioners,
1878), 9.
60 Frank Lecouvreur, From East Prussia to the Golden Gate, ed. Josephine Rosana Lecouvreur, trans. Julius
C. Behnke (Los Angeles: Angelina Book Concern, 1906), 178.
82
The Gold Rush
sizes will be able to unload their cargoes at its sides." 61 The 50 miles of San Francisco's natu-
ral coastline were thereby extended by some 15 miles, with long finger piers stretching from
the shallow mudflats of Yerba Buena cove out to the deeper, but less well-protected anchor-
ages in the ship channel. Initially, wharf construction was left to private groups that could
raise money more easily than local municipalities; among the most notable accomplish-
ments of this period was Meiggs Wharf, completed in 1853. Extending nearly 1,600 feet into
the bay from its origin at the foot of Mason Street in North Beach, it stood as a testament to
its creator, Harry Meiggs, a scoundrel who absconded with a good deal of the public trea-
sury (and city records) in 1854. 62 Local newsmen reported on the process:
The splendid wharf, partially constructed at heavy expense by the city, has
fallen into the hands of a number of gentlemen, who have formed themselves
into a stock company, with the determination of extending the wharf some eight
hundred feet further out. The stock was all taken up previous to the organiza-
tion or first meeting of the company, and the full amount of capital subscribed.
The contract for extending it has been completed and the first series of piles
already driven. In forty days the famed Central Street Wharf, will have a
competitor equal, if not superior, in every respect. 63
Said another, "The extension of Battery Street is progressing surely as lots are being
filled in in every direction." 64 The Alta California was amazed at the speed and efficiency of
the project: "as the wharves run out, the steam paddy empties the sand in between them,
and where vessels floated a few months since, merchandise is being dragged by drays and
stately structures stand." 65
Captain Fred Klebingat, who sailed out of the port in the early years of the twentieth
century, related a scene not much changed from a half century earlier:
"the fill between the wharves was just like any dump . . . they dumped rubbish from
buildings, pulverized bricks and old concrete, horse manure and dead cats, waterlogged
hay bales and cement sacks . . . anything that was heavy, useless, and cheap." 66 Innovative
lot owners hired ship captains to scuttle their craft in narrow slips between wharves. The
Evening Picayune was amazed at the prospect:
At some future period when the site of San Francisco may be explored
by a generation ignorant of its history, it will take its place by the side of
Herculaneum and Pompeii, and furnish many valuable relics to perplex the
prying Antiquarian. Buried in the streets, from six to ten feet beneath the
61 Michael Corbett, Port City: The History and Transformation of the Port of San Francisco, 1848-2010 (San
Francisco: San Francisco Architectural Heritage Press, 2011).
62 Born in upstate New York in 1811, Meiggs arrived in San Francisco aboard the Albany on January 11,
1849. Selling the cargo of lumber he brought with him, he made a fortune that allowed him to acquire
a controlling interest in Mendocino's California Lumber Manufacturing Company. Involved in local
political scandals, he fled the scene on October 6, 1854, aboard the brig American. Meiggs later became a
public utilities and railroad tycoon in Peru. New York Times, January 31, 1855.
63 San Francisco Daily Alta California, April 8, 1851.
64 San Francisco Evening Picayune, June 16, 1851.
65 San Francisco Daily Alta California, October 7, 1851.
66 Cited in Olmsted, San Francisco Waterfront, 126.
83
The Gold Rush
surface, there is already a stratum of artificial productions which the entombed
cities of Italy cannot exhibit. Knives, forks, spoons, chisels, files and hardware
of every description, gathered from the places of several conflagrations. Masses
of nails exhibiting volcanic indications, stove plates and tinware, empty bottles
by the cart-load and hundreds of other miscellanies, lie quietly and deeply
interred in Sacramento Street, and perhaps will be carefully exhumed in days to
come, and be distributed over the world as precious relics. 67
Often the work was of poor quality. "I was astonished," reported one observer, "Some
of the wharves were broken down, others were in a fair way to share the same fate, being
veritable man-traps by missing and broken planks, through which, nightly, men were
precipitated and engulfed by the muddy waters beneath Many of the houses erected on
the wharves were tottering on their insecure foundations of piles half-demolished." 68 The
city's attempt to respond to "the irregular and predatory manner in which the waterfront
was being extended by capricious enterprise" was ineffectual. 69
In response to such scandals, the 1863 California state legislature passed a bill estab-
lishing the Board of State Harbor Commissioners to "provide for the improvement and
protection of the wharves, docks, and waterfront." Between its creation and the mid-twen-
tieth century, the body spent over $120,000,000 to build, repair, and regulate port facilities
(including the construction of a 6-mile-long stone seawall along the established waterfront),
raising the funds from port charges and the sale of bonds. 70 These fees included wharfage
duties (charged for the passage of goods or passengers), dockage (paid for the berthing of
vessels), and demurrage (paid on cargo or vehicles that remained on the dock for a longer
time than was allowable). Despite these conveniences, lighters and boatmen were still
employed in some places, ferrying passengers and goods to vessels moored off the water-
front, a strategy utilized by astute sea captains wary of losing their crews to the goldfields.
Eventually the disastrous hydraulic mining methods had to be dealt with. In 1876, T
J. Arnold, Engineer of the State Board of Harbor Commissioners, issued the alarming state-
ment, that should the same rate of stream clogging continue, Suisun Bay would be almost
completely choked within fifteen years and San Pablo Bay within thirty. 71 It was a veritable
67 San Francisco Evening Picayune, September 30, 1850.
68 W. V. Stafford, "The State Wharves of San Francisco: A Lucrative Public Property," Overland Monthly 56,
no. 4 (October 1910): 341-52. See also Gerald Nash, "Government Enterprise in the West: The San Francisco
Harbor, 1863-1963," in The American West: A Reorientation (Laramie: University of Wyoming Press, 1966).
69 Cited in Corbett, Port City, 80.
70 The preeminent work on the early history of the Board of State Harbor Commissioners remains Lamberta
Margarette Voget, "The Waterfront of San Francisco, 1863-1930: A History of its Administration by the
State of California" (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1943). See also J. H. McCallum, "The
Port of San Francisco: A History of the Development of Commerce and an Analysis of the Growth of Port
Facilities on San Francisco's Waterfront," Pacific Marine Review 20, no. 3 (March 1923): 131-34. By the
mid-twentieth century, San Francisco had a waterfront 12.4 miles long, with 18 miles of ship berthing space
along 42 piers and two deepwater channels (China Basin and Islais Creek).
71 T J. Arnold, Report to the Board of State Harbor Commissioners (San Francisco: Joseph Winterburn and
Company, 1876). Before mining debris shoaled the rivers, ships drawing as much as ten feet could sail
directly to Sacramento and Stockton, where many were recycled as improvised wharves and buildings in
the style of San Francisco's waterfront. By the late 1850s, the navigation of deep-draft vessels was impos-
sible, and soon the passage of smaller vessels was seriously curbed. Robert Kelley, Battling the Inland Sea:
American Political Culture, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley, 1850-1986 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989).
84
The Gold Rush
tourniquet shutting off a life-giving artery. While the ecological and environmental impact
was severe, even worse was the fact that the bay fill was subject to shifting and liquefaction
in succeeding seismic activity; much of the damage caused to San Francisco property in
1906 and 1989 occurring in these very regions. Describing the haphazard fashion in which
the city was "made," Chilean commentator Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna opined, "San
Francisco is like a Venice made of pine instead of marble — a city of ships and piers, teem-
ing with wharves and ruled by tides. The whole central part of the city swayed noticeably
because it was built on piles the size of ships' masts driven down into the mud." 72
As the shoreline advanced, the wharves pushed into deeper water. Much of the
wharf construction came with an obvious ecological impact. By 1860, lumberjacks felled
Oakland's 5-square-mile redwood forest, including some trees that topped 300 feet and
by 1872 lumbering activities throughout the state had denuded one-third of California's
forests. Two of the tallest Sequoias sacrificed once guided captains toward the Golden
Gate from 16 miles offshore. 73 The loss of these landmarks required a policy response. To
improve navigation within the Bay, Alcatraz was outfitted with a lighthouse. Opened on
June 1, 1854, it represented the first such structure on the Pacific Coast, soon joined by those
at Fort Point (1854) and Point Bonita (1855). Lights, though, only work when they are visible.
Fog remained the greatest hazard along the California coast: to assist mariners during times
of low visibility, a fog signal (first consisting of an old cannon that was fired at regular inter-
vals and later changed to a bell) became operational at Point Bonita from August 8, 1855. 74
In 1850, the first California state legislature founded the Bar Pilots Commission to
provide safe access — at regularly established fees — to the treacherous and narrow harbor
entrance. 75 A modern communications station, with the first application of an electric
telegraph in the western United States, opened on September 22, 1853. This sophisticated
system, replacing the antiquated semaphore station above the city's eponymous Telegraph
Hill, identified and relayed information about approaching vessels. 76
In 1850, a Merchants Exchange, along with a burgeoning system of marine insur-
ance, brought order to the chaotic San Francisco waterfront, and a booming ship chandlery
business reflected the growing importance of the port. Established to collect, analyze, and
disseminate ship-traffic information, the Merchants Exchange sought to bring order to a
72 Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna, "Paginas de mi diariodurantetresanos de viaje, 1853-1854-1855," in
ObrasCompletas de Vicuna Mackenna, 2 vols. (Santiago: Universidad de Chile, 1936), 1:26. Among those
identified were the Panama, which, after serving for a time as a "lodging house and drinking ship," was
converted into a seamen's bethel, and another (the Thomas Bennett) that was "headquarters for the young
blades from Baltimore" (Roger and Nancy Olmsted, Gold Rush Ships in Levi's Plaza [San Francisco:
Historical Archaeological Investigation, 1980]). The report quoted an earlier correspondent who asked:
"How many now living can now remember the pie, doughnuts, and coffee at the stand of the old Apollo
on Battery Street . . . the stand was made by cutting into the Apollo hull, just under the cabin windows, and
many a man who stepped ashore from his long, weary voyage, took his first meal in California at this place"
("Reminiscences: The Last of the Storeships," Daily Alta California, May 22, 29, and June 5, 1882).
73 Carrie Casey, "Oakland's Redwood Retreat," American Forests 97 (November-December 1991): 55-57.
74 Ralph Shanks, "Responding to Shipwrecks: The U.S. Lighthouse and U.S. Lifesaving Service," Sea Letter
64 (2003): 6-10.
75 Stephen J. Canright, "Pilot Schooners: Navigating the Treacherous Coast and Bay," Sea Letter 64 (2003):
16-17. See also Stephen J. Canright, "By Contrast: Pilots under Sail in San Francisco Bay," Mains'l Haul: A
Journal of Pacific Maritime History 34, nos. 2-3 (1998): 7-25.
76 The firm of Sweeny & Baugh had built the semaphore station atop the 300-foot hill in 1849 and operated
it until the telegraph stations made it obsolete. Frank Soule, John Gisbon, and James Nisbet, The Annals
of San Francisco (San Francisco: Kessenger Press, 1855), 465.
85
The Gold Rush
chaotic system of conflicting reports, unregulated activity, and cutthroat competition. 77
Others were less interested in these concerns. In pursuit of business, Whitehall boatmen —
such as Dave "Hook On" Crowley — would meet deepwater ships as soon as they entered
the Bay, offering ship chandlery services, rooms to let, repair facilities, and other ameni-
ties. 78 It was not unusual for two-man Whitehall crews to wait all night beyond the Golden
Gate, one man bailing while the other rowed, in pursuit of new customers. Merchant James
Garniss reported on the frenzied scene of nautical commerce: "We had our boats, and men
on the lookout for us, and when a vessel came in, there was quite a rush of boats to board
her, and the merchant who got to the vessel first was generally the luckiest fellow There
were no regular prices, and we made what we could." 79 Charles Ross, a trader from New
Jersey, recounted that in 1849, "merchants would board vessels at the Heads (on either side
of the Golden Gate) and offer in some cases a hundred percent advance, without looking at
the invoice, for the entire cargo, no matter what it consisted of." 80 Now, rather than having
rival merchants racing out to the Golden Gate to claim the business of merchant ships
entering the harbor, an orderly process of commissioned auctions held at the Merchants
Exchange relieved the stress on overburdened wharfingers. Stevedores and longshoremen
were organized to off-load cargo along the bustling embarcadero, storing them in newly
constructed warehouse facilities that were, admittedly, little better than holding pens
for the speculative cargo they contained, but much more convenient than the previously
employed storeships. Shipping agents, meanwhile, operated on the fringes of the labor
market, and provided replacement crews to captains whose own charges had fled for the
goldfields. 81 By 1851, a dry dock and marine railway was completed at the foot of Second
Street. A US Marine Hospital, built in 1853 at the end of Rincon Point, provided medical
relief for destitute sailors (funded by a payroll tax on mariners and by revenue income, it
relieved the citizens of San Francisco from having to supplement the maintenance and care
of debilitated sailors). By 1877, it had relocated to the Presidio, with the former structure
becoming a Sailor's Home. In 1891, a quarantine station opened on Angel Island, further
isolating the residents of San Francisco from diseases carried by maritime workers. 82
It was clear then, that the gold rush was a major maritime event, both for San Francisco
and for the nation. It served to rejuvenate a moribund American merchant fleet, employing
tens of thousands of carpenters, naval architects, officers, and seamen who were suddenly in
high demand. It led to the development of new naval technologies and gave rise to the science
77 Established in 1849, the Merchants Exchange featured a network of buildings, each of which featured a
rooftop belvedere used to communicate with incoming ships via semaphore and telegraph.
78 Dave was stepfather to young Thomas Crowley, who would go on to found the tug company. The teen-
aged Crowley began his career in 1890 with an 18-foot Whitehall boat. By the turn of the century, he
had acquired a gasoline-powered launch that gave him a decided advantage over his competitors. Jerry
McMullen, "The Ubiquitous Whitehall Boatmen," Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 10
(1974): 4-7.
79 James R. Garniss, "The Early Days of San Francisco — Reminiscences for the Bancroft Library, 1877,"
10-11, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
80 Charles L. Ross, "Experiences of a Pioneer of 1847 in California," 14, Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley.
81 For good first-person accounts of these activities, see Bill Pickelhaupt, Shanghaied in San Francisco (San
Francisco: Flyblister Press, 1996).
82 The insular location was chosen for its advantages as a quarantine station. Those diagnosed with
noncontagious diseases were often housed aboard the old sloop of war Omaha.
86
The Gold Rush
of oceanography, and led to a graveyard of ships whose presence still speaks to the maritime
dimensions of San Francisco's past and to the ecological and environmental impact of that
time. It inaugurated new trade routes that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and that
led to international migration the likes of which had rarely been seen as immigrants came
from Asia, South America, Europe, and all points in between. The gold rush invigorated cities
like Valparaiso and Callao as much as it did San Francisco, and generated considerable inter-
est in Central America, where visionaries began to look for ways to broach the isthmus with
a canal that would link two of the world's greatest bodies of water. It entrenched California,
in general, and San Francisco, in particular, in the American consciousness as a place where
anything was possible and where fortunes awaited the industrious, the bold, and the intrepid.
The gold rush was, in effect, a revolutionary event.
Within a half decade of the initial onslaught, California and San Francisco became
hotbeds of maritime activity, boasting numerous maritime industries, a naval base,
government offices, and assorted accoutrements allowing even the most derelict sailor
to feel at home. While tempting to suggest that the end of the gold rush era also brought
an end to the increased pace of maritime activity in San Francisco, this is not the case.
Indeed, as the following chapters will show, the period from 1855 to 1920 saw incredible
maritime activity, including fishing and whaling, coastal commerce and deepwater sail-
ing, and transformations in the way San Franciscans worked, played, and interacted with
the waters of the Bay and beyond.
87
The Gold Rush
The Niantic Hotel, as depicted by a contem-
porary sketch artist, Niantic was the most
memorable of beached gold rush ships, but
by no means the only one. Her remains
were located beneath the TransAmerica
pyramid in the late 1970s.
William A. Leidesdorff was among the most
notable residents of early San Francisco. He
owned the first steamer on the Bay and held
several elected and appointed offices. This
West Indian immigrant was an anomaly for
his time, and is all but forgotten by modern
historians.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park.A12. 29237.
Courtesy Robert Cowan Collection. Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley.
BANC-PIC 1956.014.
Apollo, a typical storeship of the gold rush
period. Run aground and housed over, she
served as a warehouse in the absence of
traditional storage facilities.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. A12.1 5574
The Gold Rush
To attract customers during the gold rush,
shipping lines placed an emphasis on speed.
Clipper ships were in constant rivalry with
each other, and eventually with various
steamship lines. Colorful advertisements
and price wars added flavor to the competi-
tion. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company
was the most successful of all when bringing
passengers to California.
Top: A contemporary illustration of the
Boston-built Flying Cloud, advertising for
departures to California, and loading at her
New York wharf prior to departure for San
Francisco.
Center — This rarely seen 1850 Pacific Mail
handbill advertised through service to
San Francisco via the steamers California,
Panama, and Oregon, the company's first
vessels on the "West Coast. Cabin passage
from Panama to California was $300,
although rates fluctuated as competition
spurred rate wars.
Bottom: Clipper cards were colorful eye
catchers that enticed prospective custom-
ers to various shipping lines. They were
among the first full-color advertisements in
American history.
From the California State Library,
California History Section.
THROUGH UJTE JOE SAtf PEANCISCO,
VIA CHAGAE&
tilt HI IHB pivmum CTKDuanra.
CBROUt ...... UH uuu, bpum II Wmii«,
frfnTi ftirrm ft 1 iw wat. Caputis j t iib^nh
UBCCID A11B « JTJ.1E TO CHl&tES.
uwu-khiM, thTw .... f&tm
If^ii'iH*. ">">
*"ff, mm* »U» "WW ■»* k*ri. i - * ■>- S H
THtifM «•?■»■**' tmpWlHl.
D 4 AS.RJTTTALI. M JL»Hh. Stnrt. » T.
jJanfu itlml Steamship Compaiin.
ITATC HJU1. ^TIUM W,i - K.KW.
«>l>W|ii. a .
_■ in. _„u™ _j pit* di t* m —> k- ■ »■ in. u fci.
liw-T*H(. M bMk Jtmt.
From the collection of Stephen J. and
Jeremy W. Potash. Copyright Stephen J. and
Jeremy W. Potash (Steve@Potashco.com).
MERCHANTS' EXPItESS LINE OF CLIPPEfi . SEI_FB FQJt &AN FfiAWCISCO.
PmBagoe 106 fit, 117 Bays,
LJIL lltLLK
l\r*nii; lurrn -tiur
EAGLE
Source: California Historical Society.
89
The process of making real estate by scut-
tling ships and using land carved from
local hilltops was perfected in gold-rush
San Francisco. This image shows water lots
cordoned off and ready to be developed.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. J. Porter Shaw Library.
A11.4528psl
The stern of Niantic, as preserved by
the San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. Among other artifacts
associated with this historic vessel is a
complete log of its journey to gold-rush
San Francisco.
Photo courtesy of Paul Judge.
On the right, an image
from the May 3, 1851,
panorama of the city,
showing the proverbial
"forest of masts."
^; 1 —
^ S *«
IXI 1 il
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park, A1 1.7881 nl.
The Gold Rush
A mid-twentieth-century survey map shows the extent of filling in just one century.
The natural shoreline contrasts with the artificial curvature of the seawall.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. A11.15005n1, N.
No discussion of gold-rush San Francisco would be complete without a sample from this
famous panorama created by William Shew depicting the "forest of masts" rising from the Bay.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. A11. 35. 815.
91
CHAPTER 6
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
Following the whirlwind of seagoing activity accompanying the gold rush, several other
notable trends marked California's maritime history. Indeed, for all the frenetic activity
characterizing the rush to California, the most profitable and sustained period of mari-
time affairs could be found in the peripatetic sailings that brought lumber, agricultural
products, and immigrants to and from California between the Civil War and the twenti-
eth century. As one observer noted, "If one were to name the most vigorous period in the
early maritime history of San Francisco Bay, it would undoubtedly be during the 1870s and
1880s — a period when trade was relatively unhampered by restrictions and when shipping
through the Golden Gate flourished." 1 In 1880, with tonnage estimated at 3,350,000, the US
census described San Francisco, with its 233,959 people, as "the commercial metropolis of
the Pacific Coast." 2 The new residents, failed Argonauts, and intrepid entrepreneurs who
streamed to the Golden State in the mid-nineteenth century required a plethora of supplies
and necessities to make a better life for themselves along the Pacific coast. Until the comple-
tion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the quickest, safest, and surest way to bring
bulk and/or heavy commodities and passengers to and from California was via maritime
routes. Even after that date, seagoing commerce played a disproportional role in the econ-
omy and culture of the Golden State. This chapter focuses on the maritime dimensions of
the period roughly ranging from 1860 to 1900, focusing especially on the lumber and grain
trades, and on associated tasks (shipbuilding, warehousing) that arose to support and supply
these. Argonauts and their descendants provided a natural market for many products, and
this consumer base relied extensively on maritime connections.
Following the gold rush, among the first major industries to develop in the Pacific was
lumber. Newcomers to California were in dire need of wood to provide housing, firewood,
planks for sidewalks, to build and repair coastal and deepwater vessels, and for innumer-
able other purposes. Local stands of redwoods were quickly exhausted, causing residents to
look farther afield for these resources. 3 Thankfully, the heavily forested coasts of Northern
California, Oregon, and Washington provided a seemingly endless supply of timber from
which to fashion a wide variety of products, and lumber represented the first large-scale
coastal cargo. The lumber industry, and the transportation of this cargo from its region of
California State Senate, Final Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Committee on San Francisco Bay Ports
(Sacramento: California State Senate, 1951).
At that time, the city handled "99 per cent of all merchandise imported to and 83 per cent of all
exports from three Pacific states, and 60 per cent of all manufactured goods in the region." US Board
of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors and the US Shipping Board, The Ports of San Francisco, Oakland,
Berkeley, Richmond, Upper San Francisco Bay, Santa Cruz, and Monterey, California, Port Series No. 12
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1933), 141.
For local lumbering, see Sherwood D. Burgess, "The Forgotten Redwoods of the East Bay," California
Historical Society Quarterly 30 (March 1951): 1-14; and Frank M. Stanger, Sawmills in the Redwoods:
Logging on the San Francisco Peninsula, 1849-1967 (San Mateo, CA: San Mateo County Historical
Association, 1967). In this early period, sloops and schooners loaded with dressed lumber and redwood
shingles cut from the Coast Range threaded their way down to the lower bay port of Redwood City and
from there to the lumberyards of San Francisco. In later years, Redwood City would become the prime
cement and gypsum port on the West Coast.
92
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
abundance to cities farther south, makes up an extensive and highly specialized commerce
that forms the next area of our investigation.
As one historian has commented, "of all the sailing ship trades in the Pacific Coast
pioneer days, transporting lumber from the north was without doubt the largest: the indus-
try was far more profitable than the shipment of foodstuffs, household goods and industrial
machinery from the East Coast around the Horn." 4 Even before the gold rush, redwood
lumber sold for as much as $500 per 1,000 board feet (the common lot size); to meet the insa-
tiable demand that accompanied the rush to San Francisco, these prices rose to exorbitant
levels. When the first California lumber mill (established by John Reed in 1836 in Marin
County, near Richardson's Bay) and imported Hawaiian hardwoods proved insufficient
to meet growing demand, suppliers looked to the Pacific Northwest. With a coastal forest
that ran 400 miles north-south and extended 30 miles inland in some places, the supply
seemed inexhaustible. 5 Few Americans had ventured into this region until after the Mexican
American War, with only 300 living north of the Columbia River in 1849. Overnight, the
region attracted both capital and labor. By 1852, the scattered lumbering settlements around
Puget Sound grew large enough to attract the first small brigs and barks — remnants from the
gold rush fleet — and within a half-dozen years the region provided San Francisco with 60
percent of its required lumber. By 1854, their activities supported a steamer, the precursor
of the "mosquito fleet" that would dominate the waters of the region. 6 Within two decades,
fourteen mills lined the shores of Puget Sound alone.
With increased activity came increased population. Veritable armies of men worked in
company towns up and down the coast, felling trees (a mature redwood averaged 300 feet in
height and 20 feet in diameter), sawing them into lumber, and transporting them to the cities
and towns of California. It is not hyperbole to suggest, then, that the entire early economy of
the North American Pacific coast was built on extractive industries (first fur, then lumber,
fish, and gold), the fruits of which were almost entirely transported by ship; thus both mill
and ship owners amassed huge fortunes in the lumber trade. Likewise, it is no exaggeration
to suggest that the lumber from this region was the substrate on which the great cities of
California (San Francisco, Sacramento, San Diego, and Los Angeles) were constructed. 7
While the supply of lumber might have seemed inexhaustible, it was by no means easily
accessible. As seen in earlier chapters, the relative dearth of safe harbors and protected
anchorages north of San Francisco presented serious obstacles to those who wished to
get involved in lumbering operations. North of San Francisco Bay, only Humboldt and
4 Jevne Haugan, "Dog Holes and Wire Chutes: From Sailing to Steaming in the Lumber Trade," Maritime
Life and Traditions 29 (Winter 2005): 20-29, quotation on 21.
5 On the lumber trade, see Thomas Cox, Mills and Markets: A History of the Pacific Coast Lumber Industry
to 1900 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974). See also Edward van Syckel, They Tried to Cut It
All (Seattle: Pacific Search Press, 1981); Lynwood Carranco, The Redwood Lumber Industry (San Marino,
CA: Golden West Publishers, 1982); and John T. Labbe, Logging the Redwoods (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Press,
1979).
6 Thomas R. Cox, "Single Decks and Flat Bottoms: Building the West Coast's Lumber Fleet, 1850-1929,"
Journal of the West 20 (July 1981): 65-74.
7 On the transport of lumber from the region, see Wallace Martin, Sail and Steam on the Northern
California Coast, 1850-1900 (San Francisco: National Maritime Museum, 1983). See also James A. Gibbs,
West Coast Windjammers (Seattle: Superior Press, 1968); James A. Gibbs, Pacific Square-riggers (Seattle:
Superior Press, 1969); Jack McNairn and Jerry McMullen, Ships of the Redwood Coast (Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1945); and Joseph Williamson and Gordon Newell, Pacific Lumber Ships
(Seattle: Superior Press, 1960).
93
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
Crescent City provide true ports of any appreciable size along the California coast; still, the
270 -mile run from the City by the Bay to Humboldt was dotted with more than fifty active
ports where the buzzing of sawmills and the hammering of nails attested to the pace of
activity contained there. 8 These "dog-hole ports" — so named because they barely provided
ample room for a dog to turn around in — presented a challenge to ship captains and crew.
Considerable seamanship was required to guide a two-masted schooner (these small,
maneuverable vessels were the preferred and almost exclusive vessel used in the redwood
lumber trade) into such restricted ports, which offered little shelter from the heavy seas and
strong winds associated with the region, and where swells could rise and fall by as much as
25 feet. 9 The schooner rig, moreover, was preferred since it allowed these craft to sail closer
to the wind than square-rigged vessels, a vital factor when beating up and down an unchart-
ed coast that completely lacked navigation aids. Moreover, at 80 to 100 feet in length, two-
masted schooners required smaller crews than other craft, an important consideration when
hauling bulk cargoes like lumber (or the apples and potatoes that sometimes filled out the
manifest) that brought little return.
With no suitable anchorages and a total dearth of wharves, lumber vessels were
required to anchor off the coast, coming alongside as closely as safety would allow. The
crew would then move the boards, pilings, shingles, railroad ties, and assorted panels onto
the craft in a time-consuming and laborious process. A pair of ingenious — though highly
dangerous — maneuvers lessened the time that these craft would be at anchor (and hence,
not making a profit)The first was a wooden slide or chute. Wood was sent hurtling down this
apparatus from the sheer 100 -foot cliffs that dominated the northern California coast, the
descent controlled by an apron that slowed the projectile just before it reached the deck. In
two days' time, upward of 75,000 board feet of lumber could be stowed either in the cargo
hold of the schooner or in prodigious loads towering high above the deck. 10
A slightly less dangerous method of loading the cargo (though it could still result in
decapitation or serious bodily injury) utilized overhead wire cables. Being more labor-inten-
sive, this method was less popular with profit-driven managers and foremen, who routinely
favored speed over safety. By the 1880s, as wire became more readily available, they became
more plentiful. The reach of the high wire rig — being much greater than that of a chute —
allowed a vessel to now lie much further off a cliff face. In this scenario, ships would lie at
anchor beneath a cable, and slings of lumber were gravity fed to a point just above the deck
where the crew again controlled their passage by an apron. Given the inherent danger in
handling, loading, and sailing such a craft, it is no surprise that the infant maritime unions
in this country trace their origins to the men of the so-called Scandinavian navy, who were
heavily involved in this trade. Nor should it be surprising that Congress soon condemned
the dangerous conditions. Reflecting on the trade, one representative declared: "when
8 By the end of the 1850s, 300 mills were in operation. By 1870, they were producing over 440 million board feet
of lumber per annum. The early 1890s marked the high point of lumber production and movement via water,
as 1.2 billion board feet was produced; Washington mills alone outproduced all others combined. See Owen
Coy, The Humboldt Bay Region, 1850-1875 (Los Angeles: California State Historical Association, 1929).
9 Karl Kortum and Roger Olmsted ("'. . . it is a dangerous looking place': Sailing Days on the Redwood
Coast," California Historical Quarterly 50 [March 1971]: 1-19) reported ten schooners lost on the evening
of November 10, 1865, alone.
10 To insure vessel stability, the load was normally distributed in relatively equal quantities above deck and
in the cargo holds.
94
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
we reflect upon the rotten character of most of the vessels employed in the lumber trade,
our only astonishment is that the wrecks are so few Congress should act to rebuke the
monstrous sin of sending human beings to sea in such coffins as most of the lumber ships
are known to be. The scale has a sailor in one side and a dollar in the other and the dollar
weighs the man down every time." 11
While maritime laborers sought to protect their lives and livelihoods by a variety
of means (addressed in a later chapter), shipowners and lumber-mill operators likewise
sought to protect their investments and control their workforce. Entrepreneurs such as
Harry Meiggs — a corrupt San Francisco politician who opened a lumber mill at Big River
in 1852 — and Asa Simpson constructed far-reaching business models that included lumber
operations, shipyards, and company towns. 12 Originally, vessels from outside the region —
most often small square-riggers transferred from the gold rush fleet — furnished nearly all
the bottoms that were employed in the lumber trade. For the most part, these craft were
designed for general commerce and only imperfectly suited the task of hauling lumber.
Soon, this disparity was noticed and local shipyards — generally small and underfinanced
operations based in San Francisco — produced two-masted schooners especially suited to
the task. At yards from Rincon Point to Hunters Point, and from North Beach to Steamboat
Point, craftsmen turned out beamy, single-decked craft with large hatches affording easy
access to the holds. They could take on prodigious deckloads, frequently carrying as much
aboveboard as below, making loading and unloading fast and cheap. This design proved
well adapted for lumber coasters, and remained virtually unchanged for as long as the
coasting trade employed wooden ships. Inevitably, locally available stands of trees were
exhausted, and savvy lumber mill operators jumped into shipbuilding with a frenzy. Rather
than shipping boatloads of lumber to San Francisco for conversion into schooners, lumber
mills constructed these craft on-site, loading them with their cargo then hauling that cargo
south. One contemporary noted the benefits of this arrangement, stating that "this harbor
possesses every facility for the profitable prosecution of this important business [shipbuild-
ing] ... an abundance of the best of timber, and mills to cut as ordered Shipbuilding will
be carried on extensively at this place." 13
11 See C. Ray How d, Industrial Relations in the West Coast Lumber Trade (Washington DC: GPO, 1924).
12 Edwin Corman and Helen Gibbs, Time, Tide, and Timber (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press)
provides a comprehensive history of the Pope and Talbot Lumber Company and is illustrative of the
industry in general. The firm had been established by brothers Charles and William Talbot, the latter
having captained the ship Oriental to San Francisco in 1849. They expanded their operation first to
Humboldt County (where they harvested local timber for use as pilings in San Francisco) before moving
to Puget Sound, where they concentrated on Douglas fir for use as ships masts. There, they introduced
total integration, maintaining a fleet of some sixteen packets to handle the 175,000 board feet of lumber
they produced daily. See also Andrew Price, Port Blakeley: The Community Captain Renton Built (Seattle:
Port Blakeley Books, 1989), for a look at the company towns and how they were run. For a good descrip-
tion of family operations, see Emily Wilson, From Boats to Board Feet: The Wilson Family of the Pacific
Coast (Seattle: Wilson Bros. Family Foundation, 2007).
13 Humboldt Times, November 2, 1861.
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Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
C. A. Thayer
Among the best representative examples of a sailing lumber schooner is C. A. Thayer,
currently the only sailing lumber schooner still afloat. Built at the Fairhaven, California,
shipyard of Hans Bendixsen in 1895 and named for a partner in the San Francisco-based
lumber firm of E. K. Wood, Thayer was a mainstay of the Pacific coast, serving in a variety
of roles for over a half century.
At 219 feet, the three-masted Douglas-fir vessel was well suited for her designed
trade. Broad and shallow, her crew could handle tremendous quantities of lumber. Nine
men could load 575,000 board feet every voyage: half was stored belowdecks, with the
remainder piled ten feet high above board. It was not uncommon for her crew to handle
80,000 board feet in any given day. She made countless trips from Grays Harbor to San
Francisco in her first seventeen years, retiring from that trade in 1912. Damages sustained
from a heavy gale and the encroaching steam engine combined to force Thayer from the
lumber trade
For the next thirteen years, Thayer made seasonal runs from San Francisco to Bristol
Bay, Alaska, bringing men and supplies to support the salmon salting operations located
there. During the First World War, demand for shipping pushed Thayer to Australia,
where she exchanged redwood and fir for coal. (Even when she was an active lumber
ship, she was consigned almost exclusively to the Pacific coast trade, as occasional runs
to Mexico and Hawaii attest, though she did deliver lumber to both Hawaii and Fiji.) She
supported the Aleutian codfishery from 1924 to 1950, returning to Poulsbo, Washington,
with its catch each summer. For a brief spell during World War II, she was demasted
and served as an ammunition barge. Returning to the codfishery after that conflict, she
plugged along and in 1950, was the last large sailing vessel to make a commercial voyage
from the West Coast.
Thayer was purchased by the California State Parks in 1957, when she joined the
fledgling collection of ships that now make up the historic fleet berthed at Hyde Street
Pier. Transferred to the National Park Service in 1978, Thayer was designated a National
Historic Landmark in 1984. Prior to her extensive restoration (2003), Thayer hosted thou-
sands of schoolchildren in overnight programs.
In 2003, Thayer was towed to dry-dock where she underwent a massive restora-
tion. Upward of 90 percent of her timbers were replaced in a process that took three
years. Using traditional techniques-some of which had not been employed in West Coast
shipyards in many generations — preservationists returned the ship to her former condi-
tion. Today, Thayer is part of the fleet of historic vessels berthed at Hyde Street Pier.
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Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
Indeed, shipbuilding became something of a natural adjunct for the owners of north-
ern Pacific lumber mills, constructing dozens of Douglas-fir schooners to carry their prod-
uct to southern markets, ushering in an era of vertical economic integration that prefaced
the integrated monopolies of the Gilded Age. 14 Some of these lumbermen had no choice but
to diversify their operations. Located on bar harbors and outposts of the coast, they had a
hard time convincing charters to visit their dangerous anchorages and thus were forced to
obtain their own tonnage or face financial failure. Independent sawmill operators large and
small, then, churned out vessels well suited both to the trade and to the environment. Shoal-
drafted craft that could navigate shallow water and dangerous river crossings and bars,
with ample cargo space both above and below the single decks, were as ubiquitous along the
coastline as the trees that once dominated the rapidly denuded forests. Centerboard schoo-
ners (typically three-masted) further assured a safe clearing of river bars and made these
craft even more maneuverable.
A number of talented master builders came to the fore, meeting the challenges of
building vessels to match the demands of the lumber trade. Among the most notable
of these shipwrights was Hans Bendixsen, a Danish carpenter who honed his skills in
Copenhagen, building 113 wooden lumber schooners in an impressive thirty-three-year
career at Humboldt Bay 15 John Kruse, employed at Asa Simpson's yards on Coos Bay, the
Hall Brothers and W. H. Bryant of Puget Sound, and Peter Matthews of Grays Harbor were
equally productive. Matthew Turner, an Ohioan who began his shipbuilding ventures in San
Francisco before relocating to the town of Benicia on the Carquinez Straits, was even more
prolific: starting in 1870, he turned out a total of 228 sailing and steam lumber schooners. His
productivity was matched by his contributions to naval architecture: "he discarded the old
plan of the broadest beam at two-fifths the length from the bow, made his models long and
sharp forward and full aft, thus giving the stern more of a rake than was usual, and brought
the anchors, chains and weights further aft . . . producing a stiff, fast vessel that proved valu-
able in the squally waters of the Pacific Coast and that was widely imitated." 16
To provide needed cargo capacity without sacrificing speed (and remaining mindful of
the industry's shallow draft needs), builders stretched their vessels, turning out craft like the
four-masted Caroline and the five-masted Inca (both Hall Brothers vessels). In 1879, Hiram
Doncaster of Puget Sound produced Olympus, the longest single-decked vessel produced
in the world. 17 Simplifying the rig to reduce the necessary manpower produced a bald-
headed (or steamboat) schooner rig; this eliminated virtually all sail carried high. The use
of donkey engines to raise sail, handle cargo, and ground tackle further reduced crew sizes
and increased potential profits. In short, builders of the West Coast's lumber carriers met the
demands of a special trade and a forbidding coastline with ingenuity, successfully adapting
14 Most of the yards established during the nineteenth century were small. California, for example, listed 62
yards in operation in 1881; these consumed some 6.7 million board feet of lumber to produce 221 vessels
of various dimensions. See Ellis Lucia, Head Rig: The Story of the West Coast Lumber Industry (Portland,
OR: Overland West Press, 1965).
15 Hans Ditlev Bendixsen was born in Denmark and immigrated to San Francisco. By 1868, he had relocated
to Humboldt, establishing a yard first at Eureka and then at Fairhaven.
16 The remains of Turner's yard survive in Benicia. The Benicia Historical Museum possesses the bow of the
Galilee, and the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park the stern of that same vessel. These are
the sole surviving aspects of Turner's once-prodigious output.
17 Born in Nova Scotia in 1838, Doncaster migrated to the Pacific coast in 1856, and was employed in shipyards
from Port Ludlow to Puget Sound. He honed his skills at the San Francisco yards of Middlemass & Boole.
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Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
old vessels and traditional practices to new conditions. The fleet they built was essential to
lumber ports' prosperity and allowed loggers to tap the hinterlands to supply San Francisco
and other markets with much-needed inexpensive building materials. In short, these ship-
builders played an important if unspectacular role in the economic development of the
American West and areas around the Pacific Basin. By the 1880s and into the 1890s, larger
three-masted schooners entered the trade, but the major development to come was the
introduction of steam. In due time, wooden lumber schooners transitioned to steam power.
Whereas early coastal steamers were experimental — converted sailing vessels
outfitted with rudimentary boilers and engines — those utilized in the lumber trade were
purpose-built from an earlier stage. 18 These craft, however, retained many of the lines and
features of their sailing predecessors. 19 The similarity to sailing schooners was not coinci-
dental, as those earlier craft served the industry well. Beginning in the late-1880s, northern
mills constructed their own steam schooner hulls, loaded them with lumber, then thrift-
ily towed these to San Francisco to offload their cargo and be outfitted with boilers and
engines. 20 By the early twentieth century, steam-powered lumber schooners displaced the
tried-and-true sailing schooners, much to the dismay of the doughty, grizzled veterans who
protested the loss of their beloved sails, but grudgingly accepted that new technology was of
great help in maneuvering in and out of dog-holes. 21
Even by the late nineteenth century, steam schooners retained many of the lines and
features of their predecessors: built of wood, they were beamy and shallow-drafted, with
their engine far aft in a slab-sided deckhouse. They were small, seldom exceeding 200 feet,
and frequently half that size. In time, they replaced the single-ended versions, featuring slab-
sided deckhouses at the stern, with double-ended construction, with deckhouse amidships.
This allowed for labor-saving machinery (including the twin-boom cargo rig, soon to become
the standard on break-bulk freighters worldwide, but developed on West Coast steam schoo-
ners) to replace even more men, and reduced the time spent idle in port. 22 In due time, they
switched to iron and steel frames, a move pioneered by Robert Dollar. In the 1890s, Dollar
commissioned a trio of 1,800-gross-ton steel-hulled steam schooners. Measuring 240 feet,
they accommodated prodigious deckloads of lumber, with a capacity of 1.5 million board
feet. In place of the triple-expansion engine, they featured reciprocating engines rather than
the compound versions of their smaller steam schooner predecessors. Some 225 of these
"Russian-Finn men-o'-war" were built and maintained by western lumbermen, who consid-
18 As early as 1864, Jenny Jones, a 95-foot sailing schooner, had been equipped with an engine, boiler, and
propeller.
19 Aaron K. Golbus, "The Evolution of the Pacific Coast Lumber Schooner" (master's thesis, San Francisco
State University, 1996). See also Terry Ryan, "The Development of the Pacific Coast Lumber Ships,"
Journal of Nautical Research 55, no. 3 (2010): 141-60.
20 Among the first was the SS Point Arena, built in 1887 by Alexander Hay of San Francisco and owned
by the George Beadle Company of that city. She was joined the following year by Newsboy, a 108-foot,
249-ton built by Boole & Beaton in San Francisco for J. J. Shields, and later owned and operated by
Robert Dollar. See John Lyman, "Pacific Coast Wooden Steam Schooners, 1884-1924," Marine Digest
(April 13- July 17, 1943)
21 Topics of class and ethnicity will be addressed in subsequent chapters. Suffice to say that many who were
marginalized in mainstream American society — immigrants, the underclass, persons of color — found a more
receptive environment afloat than ashore. Artificial social constructs such as race and class were secondary to
the tangible attributed of strength, skill, and bravery, and became more malleable in the maritime milieu.
22 Of course, labor-saving devices could be seen in earlier versions, such as the twin cargo booms that
graced single-ended vessels such as Wapama.
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Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
ered the craft workhorses of the Pacific. Nevertheless, wooden lumber schooners continued
to be built, and by as late as 1925, 100 of these craft were still in service. 23
The steam schooner, though, was far better than the sailing craft that came before:
able to sail straight into the wind, they sailed on a fixed schedule between dog-hole ports
and the teeming markets of California. 24 Less apt to being encumbered by wind shifts and
lulls, they frequently made the round trip between dog-hole and city of delivery in half
the time required by sailing schooners and rarely needed tugboat assistance to navigate
the shallow harbors and tight quarters of the Northwest coast. Despite requiring signifi-
cantly larger crew sizes (eighteen rather than ten), the speed and predictability of passages
combined with the more efficient cargo gear more than made up for the extra wages, fuel,
start-up costs, and cargo space lost to engines, boilers, and bunkers.
Despite the advantages of steam, from an outward appearance, little had changed:
masts and sails remained as auxiliaries in case the vexing engines were uncooperative.
Belowdecks, however, things changed considerably: valuable cargo space was sacrificed
to the compound engines and coal bunkerage. Early prototypes generated only 100 horse-
power, driving a single screw propeller at roughly eight knots. By the early years of the
nineteenth century, a more efficient triple-expansion engine — manufactured principally
by the Fulton, Main Street, or Union Iron Works of San Francisco — largely replaced their
unsophisticated forebears. Another major change was that steam schooners afforded more
reliable and faster transit, for both cargo and, increasingly, passengers, since the only
way to travel before railroads was by sea. As ships grew in size, so too did the number of
cabins available for passengers — an increasingly important and profitable concern to ship
owners. 25 The provision of passenger service aboard cargo ships soon became standard for
steam schooners. 26
By the 1890s, steam schooners proved so reliable and cost-efficient (even with the
sacrificed cargo capacity and slightly larger crew sizes), they permanently displaced sailing
schooners, relegating those craft to transpacific and inter-island trade (Matthew Turner
continued to build sailing craft, such as Galilee, that dominated this commerce, setting
speed records between California and Hawaii and Tahiti in the process). 27 Thus sailing
lumber schooners continued to go down the ways of northern mill owners, destined for
long runs to Australia, a distance that the steam schooners could not cost-effectively cover.
23 In 1923, the last wooden steam schooner, Esther Johnson, was launched by McCormick. She would haul
lumber continuously until World War II.
24 As an example, from the mid-1880s (when steam schooners first appeared on the scene) until century's end
(when they had displaced sailing schooners as the primary mode of lumber transport on the Pacific), San
Francisco saw its population rise from 300,000 to 500,000 and Los Angeles grew from 10,000 to 100,000.
25 The case of the sailing schooner Wapama is illustrative. Built in 1915 at St. Helens, Oregon, for Charles
McCormick of San Francisco, she was registered at 951 tons. With accommodations for fifteen passen-
gers and the capacity to haul one million board feet of lumber, she was perfectly well suited to the coast-
wise trade. Wapama was the last of 225 wooden steam schooners built on the Pacific coast.
26 The versatility of steam lumber schooners would be seen during the Alaska gold rush, when they were
often chartered to ferry passengers to the Klondike.
27 California's longstanding trade with Hawaii had bounded in the 1870s as Hawaiian sugar began to find a
market in the United States and rocketed following the Reciprocity Treaty of 1882 that allowed Hawaiian
products to enter the mainland duty-free. A collection of medium-sized sailing craft carried most of the
raw sugar to West Coast refineries — including the California and Hawaiian plant in Crockett; among the
shipowners who prospered from the sugar trade was Swedish immigrant William Matson. Matson had
stated his career as a San Francisco boat operator, bringing coal to the Spreckels refinery in the city.
99
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
Exchanging their lumber in Australia, they returned with cargoes of coal, copra, and
assorted and sundry other items.
While lumber was necessary to house the new residents of California, so was the need
to feed these persons. During the gold rush period, grain flowed to San Francisco, as food
needed to be imported to the region; from 1860 to 1890, the grain export trade from San
Francisco dominated West Coast deepwater activities. In the early years of the gold rush,
food actually needed to be imported; the small-scale operation then in existence in places
such as Hayward and Livermore were inadequate, and larger, later operations that came to
Willamette Valley were little better. 28 Given these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that
Chile's export of wheat to California grew by nearly 1,000 percent between 1848 and 1850. 29
The price of flour astounded locals. During winter 1848-1849, William Redmond Ryan
found that in San Francisco, "Chile flour rose from $8 to $32 per 200 lb. sack in a week.
Flour fetched $100 per sack in the northern mines." 30 By 1852, flour sold for $50 per barrel in
San Francisco, $60 per ton in Antioch, and for even more in the mines. 31 Soon, however, as
failed Argonauts turned to other occupations, California's agricultural output far outpaced
local demand. While less dramatic and romantic, the discovery of wheat in California was
as wonderful, and as lucrative, as the discovery of gold.
Shiploads of wheat and grain represented some of the wealthiest cargoes ever sent out
through the Golden Gate as global connections linked San Francisco with markets from
Australia to Great Britain. 32 Since most of the grain went to foreign ports and its trade was
not subject to protectionist legislation, the greatest number of trade ships were foreign-
flagged, chiefly iron- or steel-hulled British ships and barks with sterling reputations.
British control of the shipping, as well as of such ancillary businesses as marine chartering
and insurance, further hampered American trade efforts. Heading around Cape Horn — the
dim, storm-wracked cape at the bottom of the world that for centuries was the supreme
test of men and manmade vessels — the grain was destined for European markets. Indeed,
while the gold rush might well be regarded as the first major maritime event in California's
history, the grain trade drew the greatest fleet of sailing ships ever to come to San Francisco.
The grain trade, additionally, carried significance for global maritime history, as the prin-
cipal trade of the world's deepwater sailing vessels in the closing decades of the nineteenth
century involved the shipment of California wheat. 33 The dramatic maritime dimensions of
California's agricultural history are the focus of our next area of investigation.
28 An often-told anecdote about the vagaries of the food market revolves around the person of Joshua
Norton, a ruined rice speculator who lost his mind and declared himself Emperor Norton I of San
Francisco. Other manifestations of the demand for food can be found in the ravaging egg wars on the
Farallon Islands, and the introduction of Chesapeake Bay oysters — an invasive species that displaced the
local variety — to the greater San Francisco Bay region.
29 Edward D. Melillo, "Feeding 'La Boca del Puerto': Chileans and the Maritime Origins of San Francisco,"
in Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and Power in Maritime America: Papers from the Conference Held at Mystic
Seaport, ed. Glenn Goordinier (Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum Press, 2008), 119. See also Lary M.
Dilsaver, "Food Supply for the California Gold Rush," California Geographer 23 (1983).
30 William Redmond Ryan, Personal Adventures in Upper and Lower California, in 1848-9; With the Author's
Experience at the Mines, 2 vols. (London: W. Shoberl, 1850), 1:407.
31 Franklin Buck, A Yankee Trader in the Gold Rush (Boston: Houghton and Mifflin, 1930), 56.
32 By the 1860s, Australia was itself a major grain exporter. Its role in the California market was as a
supplier of coal.
33 Rodman Paul, "The Beginnings of Agriculture in California: Innovation vs. Continuity," California
Historical Quarterly 52 (1973): 16-27.
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Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
The rise of the California grain trade can be traced to developments half a world away.
The outbreak of the Crimean War in the mid-1850s ended the supply of Russian grain to
world markets. The shortage drove prices skyward and encouraged California growers —
who were already encountering uncomfortably low prices at home — to send a handful of
cargoes of wheat, flour, and barley to select Atlantic ports, then transship them to Europe.
Once European millers learned how to grind it, California wheat became highly sought
after for its hard, glutinous qualities, and it was often blended with local European varieties
to produce a hybrid flour that quickly became popular in Europe. 34 The first, experimental,
shipment of grain directly from California around Cape Horn occurred in 1858.While that
venture was not successful, owing to the novel character of the grain and the ignorance of
New York millers in how to manage it, another followed in 1859, when Californians, for the
first time, raised a crop beyond their own needs.
The hearty California crop was able to withstand the 14,000-mile journey to
Liverpool (and a journey that brought it twice across the Equator and within a few miles
of the Antarctic Circle) remarkably well. By 1860, a strong bumper crop accompanying the
July harvest resulted in the export of 1,087 tons (six million bushels) suggesting an expec-
tation of continuous trade between California and external markets for years to come.
Unfortunately, Mother Nature was not cooperative, with costly floods in 1861-1862 and
again in 1863-1864 causing California to return to its unenviable position as importer of
breadstuffs, followed by serious droughts in 1864-1865. The outbreak of the American Civil
War also disrupted trade. With fewer US-flagged ships available to carry the goods and
heightened marine insurance rates cutting into thin profit margins, industry survival was
dubious. 35 However, prudent British investors were attracted to the industry, and kept an
eye on developments in the region. 36 The first year of unbroken trade between the two ports
was 1865-1866, and the results were encouraging enough that other investors flocked to the
trade. Both a European drought in 1867 and then an extended period of wet weather there
from 1875 to 1879, which drowned much of the local crop, forced English merchants to look
to California for sustenance.
34 To a significant degree, the Pacific coast exported its grain in the form of wheat rather than as flour. The
aridity of the great Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys produced a hard, dry, and unusually white flour.
These qualities protected it from insects, and rendered it peculiarly safe for long-distance sea voyages,
but it presented some milling challenges. It needed to be made wet before grinding, and was only profit-
able when combined with the softer varieties of European and Atlantic Seaboard varieties. When it was
received with great interest by the markets of Liverpool, the twin valleys began to develop into one of the
great wheat regions of the nation; largely because of their output, the state became the second-largest
wheat-producing state in the nation by the end of the nineteenth century.
35 The loss of US-flagged ships can be attributed to several factors. Depredations by enemy raiders, requisi-
tioning by the government for military service, and sale to foreign flags to avoid both of these fates were
the leading causes.
36 British investors were also attracted to California because the currency of the region was still backed by
gold, unlike the inflated dollars then in circulation on the East Coast.
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Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
Balclutha
The flagship of the San Francisco Maritime Museum is without doubt the square-rigged,
three-masted ship Balclutha. Serving in a variety of roles in her long working career,
the ship is emblematic of any number of issues in West Coast maritime history. Long-
distance trade, racial and class relations, the lumber and fishing industries, and other
issues are all seen in her history. Indeed, by focusing on the particulars of this vessel, one
could extrapolate many key features of Pacific coast maritime history in general.
Built by Charles Connell and Company of Glasgow, Balclutha was launched from the
river Clyde in 1886. Steel-hulled, she was emblematic of the sailing vessels built in British
yards that dominated deepwater trade in the waning years of the nineteenth century. Her
crew of twenty-six, needed to handle the 1,689- ton 256-foot vessel, was likewise typi-
cal of the time. Originally built for the grain trade, her later career saw her carry sundry
commodities from Great Britain and American East Coast ports to various Pacific locales,
picking up nitrates from South America, lumber from the Pacific Northwest, and coal from
Australia. She completed seventeen passages around Cape Horn to the Pacific, bring-
ing diverse cargoes to West Coast ports, including a handful of stops in San Francisco.
(She called at San Francisco on a half-dozen separate occasions; this was her only North
American West Coast port-of-call.) Inbound, she carried coal, hardware, manufactured
items, and spirituous liquors, which she exchanged for California grain. Following thir-
teen years flying the Red Duster, she was transferred to Hawaiian registry in 1899, and
was the last ship to fly that kingdom's flag. In 1901, the vessel was admitted to American
registry by a special act of Congress. Owned by the Pope & Talbot Lumber Company, she
was inextricably linked to San Francisco from that time on. From 1902, she called that city
home, and made annual runs to the Alaskan fishing grounds, 2,400 miles from the Golden
Gate, when she was chartered to the Alaska Packers Association (APA).
Her cargo heading north consisted of nearly 100 cannery workers, 1,000 tons of
supplies, and livestock, seamen, and materials for the seasonal run. The APA owned and
operated nearly two dozen Alaskan canneries, and ships like Balclutha represented a
tangible link to the United States for the isolated communities of the frozen north. A large
majority of the cannery workers were Asian immigrants, who occupied cramped and foul-
smelling quarters in the 'tweendecks. Dubbed the "China Gang," their numbers nonethe-
less included a good representation of Filipinos, Mexicans, and other nationalities. Their
work involved butchering, cleaning, and trimming the fish before it was canned, a process
made infinitely easier through the implementation of machinery via the derogatorily
named "Iron Chink." They were joined on the voyage by Mediterranean and Scandinavian
fishermen, who enjoyed comparatively luxurious accommodations, though the work they
were engaged in was equally dangerous and grueling.
From 1904, following a grounding in Alaska, Pope & Talbot sold Balclutha outright
to the APA, which operated her as Star of Alaska. She served in this capacity until her
1930 sale to a private individual who used her for entertainment purposes. Among her
notable achievements during this time was an appearance in the film Mutiny on the
Bounty, but she was slowly deteriorating and nearing an ignominious end. The Maritime
Museum acquired her in 1954; in 1978, she was transferred to the National Park Service;
and in 1985, Balclutha was designated a National Historic Landmark.
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Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
With the conclusion of hostilities, pent-up demand and pent-up capacity united; the
ending of the war coincided with a cycle of better rainfall in California, and by 1866-1867
the state produced such a surplus that it exported twice as much wheat and flour as in any
previous season. Enormous wheat ranches sprouted from the fertile Central Valley, trans-
forming the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys into the "breadbasket of Europe." 37 Owing
to a system of mass production akin to an industrial plant, yields per acre averaged around
twenty bushels (this would triple by the 1880s). Mechanized farm implements allowed
greater acreages to be planted, harvested, sacked, and shipped. With the adoption of such
machines as the mechanized reaper and thresher, it was common for California farmers to
increase their production to over twenty acres per day. 38 The results were astounding: in
1848, the region had raised nothing and was a net importer of breadstuffs; by 1858, it was
barely supporting its own population, although contemporary pundits saw great prom-
ise. Opined one: "it is now a well-ascertained fact that California stands without a rival
in respect to her capacity for producing wheat and other grains . . . she produces in larger
quantities, of better quality, with more certainty and with less labor than any other coun-
try in the world. The people of California 'ate better bread, at lower cost, than any other on
earth.'" 39 This observation seemed prescient: by 1868, California had raised a larger surplus
than any other state in the nation, accounting for 10 percent of the national output, and
generating some $20 million in wheat sales alone, an amount equal to that coming from
precious metals. 40
For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1868, San Francisco alone handled a little more
than one-third of all the wheat shipped from the United States, a feat it matched the follow-
ing year. In 1868, there were 193 ships chartered to carry grain from San Francisco; in 1869,
that number was 240The rush was on again. Indeed, between 1869 and 1899, California
and, to a lesser extent her northern neighbors, sent to Britain each year somewhere between
one-quarter and three-fourths as much grain as was exported by all the rest of the nation. 41
Coincidentally, that very season marked a significant downturn in European output, caus-
ing deficient harvests that required local governments to dip into reserve stocks. The result
37 One of the earliest ranches was owned and operated by Hugh S. Glenn, a physician who had arrived
in 1849 with little money. By 1880, he had acquired holdings variously reported at between 55,000 and
65,000 acres. He shipped the wheat from his ranch to the United Kingdom on his own account, charter-
ing vessels to handle the harvest of over a half-million bushels. His career came to an abrupt end when
he was shot to death by a former employee in 1883. Morton Rothstein, "American Wheat and the British
Market, 1860-1905" (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1960).
38 One of the first steam-driven plows, nicknamed "Mayflower" in honor of its inventor, Philander
Standish, was put on display in Martinez, California, on January 11, 1868. It was reputed to be able to
plow as many as three acres per hour.
39 George Davidson, "Directory of the Pacific Coast of the United States," Hong Kong Monthly 10 (April
1858): 456-62. The same source, in an even greater feat of prognostication, predicted "the cultivation of
the grape has proved conclusively that this country produces this fruit in the greatest variety and abun-
dance and in a few years will surpass the most extensive wine producing countries of the world . . . the
true wealth of this country has but commenced" (459).
40 By 1869, the trade had expanded to 243,199 tons of wheat and 352,969 bushels of flour.
41 At the peak of the trade, 1881-1882, San Francisco alone freighted 550 grain ships (containing wheat
and flour, plus an additional nine which contained flour alone) in a single season, and Portland 100
more. Most Pacific Northwest production — centered on Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma — was sent to San
Francisco in small coasting vessels for transshipment to Europe, although by the 1880s a direct link had
been established. Of the 559 San Francisco departures, 345 flew the Red Duster of Great Britain, and 149
the Stars and Stripes of the United States.
103
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
was a highly profitable grain trade (the price per bushel fluctuated between $1.25 and $1.82,
settling mostly at around $1.50, while shipping rates per ton ran from $6 to $38, averag-
ing $26) that revolved around the twin poles of San Francisco and Liverpool; in the words
of one historian, "rural California and mercantile San Francisco became appendages to
Victorian Britain." 42 As responsibility for carrying the crop and underwriting the marine
insurance for the trade became a British prerogative, the California grain trade "became an
almost perfect opportunity for Victorian economic imperialism" with openings for British
shipping, insurance, finance, coal, and manufactured goods. 43 As the editor of California
Banker's Magazine put it in 1891: "Take a walk around San Francisco . . . see here the English
insurance offices on the right and left. Here are the Thames and Mercy, the Liverpool,
London and Globe . . . the Norwich, Union, Royal, Northern, Imperial, Queen, London and
Lancashire, Liverpool-Underwriters, Lion, Phoenix, Sun, Universal, Scottish Union, North
British, Guardian, Maritime, Marine, London Assurance." 44 Leading British financial insti-
tutions, such as the Anglo-California bank, were influential in advancing loans on wheat
shipments, becoming major players in San Francisco in the process. While other American
wheat-producing regions paid homage to Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, Milwaukee, or New
York, those on the Pacific had but one overlord: Liverpool. 45 Due to the grain trade, exports
from San Francisco grew four times faster than those from Atlantic coast harbors in the
period from 1860 to 1882. To give a few illustrative statistics, consider the following: in 1882,
grain constituted over 97 percent of all California exports; for the half decade ending with
the 1885 harvest, the state produced 31.5 percent of all US grain exports, a figure that rose
to 42.9 percent for the next five years. 46
In 1867, about 80 percent of California's wheat and flour exports went to Great Britain
and reports from England spoke of "the favor with which it was received in the Liverpool
markets." 47 That year's harvest marked the beginning of a large and steady surplus, and local
interests quickly seized the opportunity. In September, a group of merchants founded the San
Francisco Produce Exchange receiving daily price quotes via cable from Liverpool and daily
reports on crop conditions in all counties that routinely exported to the English market; this
became the nerve center for a burgeoning international trade. When the transatlantic cable
was completed in 1886, the tremendous increase in the speed of communication sparked a
frenzy; there was now practically instantaneous communication with Liverpool, though the
staples of conversation remained shipping rates, the Liverpool markets, and rain forecasts. 48
Relatively little of this cargo moved in American vessels. Until the mid-1870s, they carried less
42 Rodman Paul, "The Wheat Trade between California and the United Kingdom," Mississippi Valley
Historical Review 45 (December 1958): 391-412, quotation on 412.
43 Paul, "The Wheat Trade," 399.
44 Quoted in Paul, "Wheat Trade," 405.
45 The closeness of the relationship can be seen in the use of centals — hundred-pound gunney sacks--
and not bushels as the preferred method of measure and shipment. This was found nowhere outside
the British Empire save in the California grain trade. Even though it meant an extra charge against the
wheat, it was considered necessary, as a safety measure, to ship the cargo in sacks, rather than in bulk.
46 During the peak year of 1880-1881, over 1.1 million tons of wheat and almost 920,000 barrels of flour
headed out through the Golden Gate, an almost as large as the average annual exports of all dry cargo
from San Francisco during the period 1925-1940.
47 Paul, "The Wheat Trade," 400.
48 The focus on precipitation was understandable: a severe drought in 1871 cut that year's San Joaquin
Valley wheat crop in half.
104
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
than half — a percentage that did not increase even when a group of Bath, Maine, shipyards
sent out a group of large, efficient, wooden-hulled "Downeasters," what one maritime histo-
rian has called "the highest development of the sailing ship." 49
En route from San Francisco to the English Channel, the cargo might be bought and
sold several times; captains made to ports such as Falmouth, Cornwall, or Queenstown "for
orders" and then proceeded to the final "discharge port," which depended on the location
of the mill that had become the final purchaser. While many assume that British dominance
of the trade excluded Americans completely, this was not the case. Isaac Friedlander, a
prominent and ruthless San Francisco speculator dominated the supply of inbound ship-
ping, and it seems unlikely that enough ships would have found their way to the Pacific
coast during this period had it not been for the activities of this prominent San Franciscan.
Friedlander, described as a man of "farsighted vision and constructive instincts" had been a
participant in the California's first maritime event, arriving in 1849 aboard South Carolina,
and was a major player in the second. 50 With almost unlimited credit at his disposal, he
chartered vessels months in advance of the harvest, using crop reports supplied by local
agents. When he calculated properly, he could force up shipping rates and make a hand-
some profit; when he was wrong, as he occasionally was, he could go bust. In either case,
he supplied the shipping that moved the grain, and thus exercised tremendous pressure
on California farmers. Hailed and condemned as "the grain king," he controlled most of
California's shipping facilities and wielded a disproportionate influence over the price
of grain. When he died in 1878, a dozen smaller entrepreneurs rushed to take his place.
Among the most notable was George Washington McNear who built warehouses and
wharves at Port Costa, a new and advantageous location far up the Bay on the Carquinez
Strait. McNear's Port Costa Warehouse and Dock Company, with a capacity of 70,000
tons of grain and outfitted with huge grain elevators and a 2,300-foot wharf, was the larg-
est such facility in the world. 51 When the Central Pacific Railroad completed its connec-
tion through Martinez in 1879, the advantages of Carquinez Strait for loading grain were
at once realized. 52 By 1884, grain wharves extended almost continuously along four or five
miles of the strait. Oceangoing vessels, river steamboats, and the railroad could all conve-
niently connect here to take that year's estimated harvest of forty million bushels. 53 Half
the ships clearing San Francisco with grain for foreign ports loaded at Carquinez Strait; in
years when freight rates to Europe were low, these anchorages were more than just seasonal
ports-of-call. The four-masted bark Butreshire, for example, spent more than two years
49 According to Howard I. Chapelle, 975 Downeasters were built, mostly in Maine yards and mostly for the
San Francisco trade, in the quarter century following the American Civil War.
50 On Friedlander, see D. Morgan, Merchants of Grain (New York: Viking Press, 1979).
51 With grain storage came rodent infestations. Professional ratcatchers, such as the ones who caught
seventy of the vermin aboard the grain ship Semantha in one night, were employed to protect the
cargoes. They did this by dropping lines down the ventilator, allowing rats to crawl up to the deck, where
they were then chased out the scuppers.
52 Scott Akers, "History of the Grain Industry in Contra Costa County, 1859-1910" (master's thesis, San
Diego State College, 1971), 32. By that point, half of all grain ships were loading at various ports along
the Carquinez Straits. During their extended stays, crews engaged in sailing regattas, and participated in
cricket matches held in communities such as Martinez and South Vallejo.
53 The following years saw bumper crops of 1.7 million tons in 1880 and 1.3 million tons in 1881. The
state's last million-ton crop was in 1892. That year, only 39 US-flagged ships participated in the trade, as
opposed to 234 foreign ships. A decade later, the scene was even more telling: of 159 vessel departures,
just 10 were American, while 103 were British.
105
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
anchored off Sausalito, while Cawdor lay at anchor four years off Martinez waiting for a rise
in homeward grain rates. Equipped with elevated double-track railroad lines, moving chain
elevators, and other technical improvements, the Port Costa docks could accommodate
more than a dozen ships at one time, and there was seemingly no end of customers.
Just as schooners were the preferred vessels for the coastwise lumber trade, there
was a preferred craft for the grain trade. The 14,000-nautical-mile voyage between San
Francisco and Liverpool by way of Cape Horn represented one of the longest commer-
cial voyages in the world. The cost of coal for such a voyage would have been extreme; as
such, only sailing vessels were employed in the trade. Ships and barks of 1,000 tons were
adequate in the early years of the trade, but as the size of the crop grew, so too did the size
of the ships engaged in the trade. By the 1870s, 2,000-ton vessels were appearing, and by
the 1880s, it was not uncommon to see 2,500-ton craft anchored at the great grain ports of
Vallejo and Martinez. 54 The bulky, low-paying nature of the cargo meant that the increased
cost of transshipment (say, via isthmian railroad) would be too great; hence the willing-
ness of shippers to withstand the climactic extremes of a Cape Horn sailing (the five-month
journey took sailors from the hottest summer to the coldest winter, then back to the hottest
summer). Of the various craft available for the journey, square-rigged wooden Downeasters
were the chosen craft. These "medium clippers" had a relatively large cargo capacity,
great strength, and required only half as many men in the crew as comparably sized craft,
yet they still achieved very good speeds. Powerful and manned by the most experienced
seamen, they were broadwaisted and tall, with gleaming skysails. Featuring a squarer stern
in contrast to the typically rounded hull of the clipper, they were built with "made masts"
(a reflection of the lack of adequately tall trees that could be used as masts — in response,
Mainers ingenuously made their masts out of a number of pie-shaped pieces, banded
together with iron), wooden anchor stocks, rope (rather than chain) steering tackle, oak
framing, and southern pine planking. But while they eschewed some modern conveniences,
they embraced others: side light towers, steam winches, windlasses, and rigging screws.
Above all, they were beautiful, made by craftsmen with Euclidian passion for good-looking
shapes. They were lofty and heavily sparred — although not so much as their clipper prede-
cessors — and clothed in the symmetrical, snow-white canvas for which Yankee sailmakers
had become famous the world around. 55 Named because they were built in Maine (east of
the previous shipbuilding centers of Boston and New York and downwind of the prevail-
ing westerlies) these vessels, called "the highest development of the sailing ship, combin-
ing speed, handiness, cargo -capacity and low operating costs to a degree never obtained
in any earlier square-rigger," set the standard for smartness and seamanship throughout
the world. 56 Larger and as fast as their British counterparts, they did, in fact, deliver their
cargoes in as good a shape as any other. At their best, they completed the voyage from
California to the British Isles in 100 days, a marked improvement over the four-and-a-half-
month sojourn common to most other ships.
54 The average grain trader was 1,250 tons, or approximately five times larger than the typical 275-ton
vessel commonly encountered during the gold rush.
55 See Deirdre O'Regan, "Sailmaking in Nineteenth Century New England" (master's thesis, East Carolina
University, 2001).
56 American bark was the preferred contemporary term, but the name stuck and, like windjammer became
an accepted term in maritime history. Quoted in Bill Caldwell, Rivers of Fortune: Where Maine Tides and
Money Flowed (Camden ME: Down East Books, 1983), 112.
106
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
Downeasters were to Maine what clippers had been to Massachusetts. Regrettably,
the fixation on building wooden craft hindered the American merchant marine. Where
other nations were forced by necessity to look for new technologies and building materials,
taciturn New Englanders harvested the bounty of their nearby forests to continue building
wooden craft, eschewing in the process technological development and savvy investment
in maritime matters. While other nations, long since devoid of any comparative advantage
in wooden ship construction, were forced to turn from forest to mine to locate shipbuild-
ing materials, New England extended the era of wooden shipbuilding by at least a quarter
century 57 In shipbuilding, Maine, like the Pacific Northwest, had the advantage of being
near the source of timber (indeed, many down-east vessels were built inland and dragged
to the sea by teams of as many as 160 oxen). Moreover, labor was cheaper than in New York
or Boston, and there was a long tradition of both shipbuilding and sailing among the lead-
ing families of the state. As early as the eighteenth century, Maine farmers built their own
schooners from local oak and yellow pine. At that time, hundreds of schooners were built
locally for use in the burgeoning West Indies trade, with Mainers transporting red oak
barrel staves (with lumber available for $8 per 1,000 board feet in Bangor going for $60 in
Cuba) to the Caribbean and returning with barrels of rum, coffee, and molasses. 58 The aver-
age Maine vessel grew from 129 tons in 1780 to 680 tons by the mid-nineteenth century. In
the 1850s, the small yards congregated along the Kennebec River alone turned out 345 full-
rigged ships, many built on contract for New York or Boston merchants at a lower cost than
they could ever be built in those cities. The wooden yards of Maine soon began turning out
dozens of ships and barks (ranging from 1,400 to 2,400 tons) to meet the demands of the
California grain trade, which required sailing vessels. 59
As in previous years, vessels were something of a community enterprise, built and
officered by local men and managed by a leading citizen. In many cases, they were family
operations, and when a family owned a controlling interest of the ship, the family on board
was the rule, not the exception. Up until the middle of the nineteenth century, the sons of
the best families went to sea before the mast with a view to learning the ropes and moving
to the quarterdeck, leading to avast pool of professional seamen. In an incomplete list of
Searsport, Maine, there were seventy-five recorded births at sea, and but one fatality; Fred
Duncan, in his, Deepwater Family, reports being born dockside in a Downeaster in San
Francisco in the 1880s. 60
If American yards were producing elegant ships more than capable of carrying
57 Iron steamers had been built along the river Clyde by as early as 1819. By 1854, when Americans were
concentrating on wooden clipper ships, Lloyd's Register listed 156 iron vessels (98 steamers and 58 sail-
ing), with the number of full-rigged ships up from 8 to 26 since 1852. By the 1860s and 1870s, hundreds
of iron sailing ships were being produced annually in Scotland, England, Ireland, and Wales. The first
appearance of a British iron ship in San Francisco was the 606-ton Antelope, built at Liverpool in 1845,
which the first city directory notes was tied up at the Commercial Wharf, Clark's Point, in 1850. She was,
in fact, one of the first full-rigged ships built entirely of iron, joining a pair of smaller vessels, the brig
Hoffnung and bark Fortschrifft built by the Germans in 1844 and 1845, respectively.
58 Like Spanish galleons that coordinated their sailing to avoid the tempestuous hurricane season, these
vessels were laid up in the summer, allowing the Mainer to avoid yellow fever while also affording him
the opportunity to tend to his crops and other responsibilities.
59 Between 1823 and 1903, the Sewall family yard of Bath alone turned out 105 craft, with a total tonnage of
130,953. The 350 other Maine operations added 5,000 vessels and 2.5 million tons to that figure.
60 Fred Duncan, Deepwater Family (New York: Random House, 1969).
107
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
the growing shipments of California wheat, why, then, were there not more in the trade?
Froml872 to 1886, US-flagged ships constituted just over one-third of the grain fleet, with
British iron and steel ships dominating the trade. As the years progressed, this became
even more telling: between 1886 and 1892, US ships constituted less than 20 percent of the
fleet, and by 1901 only 10 US grain ships cleared San Francisco, as compared to 140 foreign-
flagged (including 103 British) vessels. One factor could be sheer numbers: between 1865
and 1900, New England launched 975 square-riggers. While seemingly impressive, this
figure pales in comparison to the 3,000 that Great Britain built in the half-century ending
with 1900. But volume is only one indicator: the full answer lies in the composition of
the cargo purchasers. The buyers of the cargo were British and they demanded that their
cargoes be insured with "standard British companies." British insurers, notably Lloyd's of
London, preferred British iron ships to American wooden ones. They argued that iron ships
were safer from fire, would stand unlimited driving into a head sea, were "tighter" and less
liable to damaging leaks, and had more cargo space. Last, in case of disaster at sea, iron
ships were likely to sink, thereby making the insurance quickly available to the cargo owner
in contrast to a wooden vessel "which can more rapidly survive a shock, get to port with a
badly damaged cargo, and then lead to disputes and litigation with insurance companies." 61
British ships and barks, which — being longer in proportion to their tonnage than the wood-
en Downeasters, with as many as four masts by the 1870s — earned a reputation for being
"easy and hungry." Embittered Americans claimed that British insurers were unjustifiably
prejudiced against their wooden ships in favor of British iron ones. 62 In the later years of the
grain trade, British shipbuilders switched from iron to stronger steel, gaining even more of a
comparative advantage.
Although displaced from the profitable grain trade, Downeasters nonetheless
remained important players in California's agricultural and maritime history, shifting
their focus to importing nitrate-laden guano from the Pacific coast of South America to
San Francisco for use in the Central Valley. Found primarily on the dry Chincha Islands
off the Peruvian coast (and mined by imported Chinese laborers who worked under near-
slave conditions) guano kept Downeasters in business for longer than anyone would have
imagined. 63 The Chinchas contained up to two hundred feet of compacted guano deposits,
and from the 1840s until the mid-1880s there were often two hundred ships lying at anchor,
waiting to take this cargo to ports near and far. 64 Tens of thousands of tons made its way
through the Golden Gate, destined for California's Central Valley. Originally, guano — made
up of bird droppings mixed with the remains of the birds themselves — was looked down
61 Morton Rothstein, "American Wheat and the British Market, 1860-1905"
(PhD diss., Cornell University, 1960).
62 In 1881, 62 percent of the grain was carried in US ships; that dropped to 27 percent the following year
and to 14 percent by 1891. That year, the four-masted Shenandoah, driven by her magnificent spread of
two acres of canvas, carried the largest grain cargo on record: 112,000 centals (about 5,300 tons) worth
some $175,000 (which, incidentally, was the cost of her construction).
63 See Gregory T. Kushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
64 Gaddis Smith, "Agricultural Roots of Maritime History," American Neptune 44 (1984): 5-10.
108
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
upon and seen as a reprehensible cargo, one befitting only second-class vessels. 65 But by the
1850s, the trade developed to so stupendous a scale that a contemporary writer in Hunt's
Merchant Magazine argued that the nitrate-rich guano deposits in the Chinchas were
intrinsically more valuable than the gold mines of California. 66 Between 1851 and 1872, ten
million tons of this fertilizer, at an annual value of $20 to $30 million, was brought north
to California, a goodly portion of this carried in Maine vessels. 67 The cargo was worth its
weight in human misery, as thousands of Chinese migrants perished in the noxious condi-
tions, in what is rightly considered a nineteenth-century version of chattel slavery. It is a
fitting example of the business practices that embraced an unchecked exploitation of both
natural and human resources in an unsustainable manner.
While the trade and transport of lumber, grain, and assorted general cargo might
have been the most profitable and prominent of maritime activities in California in the half
century following the Gold Rush, they were by no means the only ones. The next chapters
will look at fishing and whaling, as well as at trends in immigration, transpacific commerce,
and coastwise trade.
65 The Chinchas are located in the Humboldt current, a path more crowded with marine life than perhaps
any other. These fish provide abundant food for millions of seabirds, whose droppings accumulate on
the arid islands, where no rainfall is present to wash it into the sea. See David Hollett, More Precious than
Gold: The Story of the Peruvian Guano Trade (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2008).
66 Hollett, More Precious than Gold, 17.
67 For a good treatment of the guano trade, see Richard King, "The Chinchas and the Guano Rush,"
Maritime Life and Traditions 25 (Winter 2004): 48-61. In addition to guano, alfalfa was introduced to
California agriculturists from the similarly conditioned Mediterranean climate of Chile.
109
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
Loading lumber via overhead sling or wire
chute was a dangerous task that tested the
nerve of the most experienced seamen. This
image shows the conditions that lumber sail-
ors faced along the Mendocino coast as they
load a vessel via lumber chute.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park, E11.22.037.
Lumberyards often built their own craft on
site, in a penurious example of efficiency.
Here, the schooner Electra, built by Thomas
Petersen at Little River is nearing completion.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. E4.6, 316n, pi.
Handling the prodigious quantities of lumber required the
use of longshoremen in San Francisco and other Pacific ports.
Here, employees of the San Francisco-based McDonald and
McKinnon yard stack lumber.
Courtesy University Library, University of
California Davis. A.J. McKinnon Collection.
110
Post-Gold Rush Maritime Activities
Downeaster William H. Macy was built in
Rockport, Maine, in 1883 and entered the
Cape Horn trade not long after. She and
her kind extended the wooden shipbuild-
ing tradition in New England by at least a
generation, and she is representative of the
last American built wooden ships to carry
cargo around Cape Horn.
Grain ships awaiting their orders at anchor
in the Carquinez Straits. Often, vessels
would wait for months — sometimes years —
at anchor, anticipating favorable rate chang-
es. Crews routinely participated in regattas,
cricket matches, and other diversions to
pass the time.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. A12. 4244.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. Morton-Waters Collection,
C20.233n1.
Balclutha, now the flagship of the San
Francisco Maritime National Historical
Park, was once part of a tremendous grain
fleet that served the West Coast of North
America. At the height of the grain trade, 559
vessels participated in one year. Here she is
on one of her many trips around Cape Horn.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. A6.35795pl, n.
Ill
CHAPTER 7
Fishing and Whaling
While the lumber and grain industries were among the most important from a maritime
perspective in post-gold rush California, they were by no means the only ones dependent
on access to the seas and rivers for their existence. Ships and boats associated with coastal
commerce, inland navigation, the movement of passengers and goods, and assorted activi-
ties are covered in subsequent chapters. Perhaps no industry, though, relied more on the
maritime milieu than those that plied the waters for the rich resources provided by fish and
whales. The twin activities of fishing and whaling played a prominent role in the economy,
ecology, and society of California from an early period, but never more so than in the years
between the American Civil War and America's entrance into World War I. This chapter
proposes an investigation of these industries, while also looking at the social impact that
fishing and whaling played in California and in the lives of their practitioners.
The ability of indigenous Californians to harvest the riches of the sea are well docu-
mented, and early Euro -American settlers in the region were similarly taken by the rela-
tive abundance of shellfish and other marine life that was readily available. Likewise, as we
have seen, bartering resources such as otter pelts was routine, continuing a long tradition
of using the maritime environment for both sustenance and trade before the gold rush. As
with other activities, that event transformed California fisheries, turning them from what
were essentially subsistence activities to commercial ones. During the late 1840s and into
the early 1850s, California's growing population required food but produced almost none.
Soon, though, men who failed at the mines turned to all sorts of other endeavors, one of
which, naturally, was fishing. As seen earlier, this situation stimulated both agriculture in the
Central Valley and a rich fishing industry in the state's rivers, lakes, and ocean.
Commercial salmon fishing started on the Sacramento River as early as 1852; within a
half decade, there were 100 boats engaged in this operation. Salmon fishing employed rough-
ly 200 fishermen and half again that number were employed in shoreside occupations, curing
and pickling some 200,000 fish. Soon, technology developed especially suited to the industry.
By 1864, the first California cannery had opened on the Sacramento River. 1 Just four years
later, local entrepreneur J. J. Griffin developed a double-ended salmon fishing boat, known as
the "river gill-netter" to better process the catch. 2
The salmon runs of the Sacramento River were the most intensely ever fished: in both
1880 and again in 1883, some 1,500 boats, employed by twenty-one different canneries,
netted more than ten million pounds of salmon. As early as 1870, state officials recognized
the importance of this activity: "The salmon is the most important visitor to our rivers. It
has appropriately been called the 'King of Fish.' The richness of its flesh, its large size, the
certainty of its annual return from the ocean, the rapidity with which, under favorable
conditions, it is multiplied, all render it an important article of human food. It has probably
1 Operated by Hapgood, Hume, and Company, it was located on a barge in Yolo County.
2 Griffin's yards were located at Broderick, just across the river from Sacramento. From 1885 onward, the
industry was in decline, and the last cannery closed in 1919.
112
Fishing and Whaling
been the chief source of subsistence to more people than any other food." 3
While the salmon may have seemed an inexhaustible resource, it was soon clear that
such was not the case. By the early twentieth century, the salmon fisheries centered in the
frigid waters of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska became remarkably profitable, though still
controlled by California (in particular, San Francisco) interests. When the local California
catch was unable to satiate the diets of Argonauts, more lucrative grounds were sought
outside the immediate region. Soon, commercial salmon fisheries were seen on the Columbia
River and on Puget Sound, though remaining relatively inconsequential until the introduc-
tion of canneries there (in 1866) and staying small relative to their California counterparts
for some years after.
The Columbia River canneries were next to be developed. Recognizing that the stock
of Sacramento salmon were not without limits, visionaries began to look for new grounds to
exploit. The first operation, led by Maine natives William, George, and John Hume (veterans
of the Sacramento fishery who had inaugurated cannery operations there) opened in 1866.
That first year, the brothers produced 4,000 cases, each of which held four dozen one-pound
cans of salmon. The innovative Humes introduced another concept to the region, when, in
1871, they hired Chinese laborers to work in the cannery operations (the fishing itself being
done by Scandinavian or Southern European immigrants who manned near 2,000 boats,
the nets of which, "if laid together, would run 545 miles"). 4 By 1881, there were around 4,000
Chinese employed at approximately fifty Columbia River canneries, including more than
two dozen at Astoria alone. 5 By 1895, these facilities produced over 635,000 cases of canned
salmon, which found eager consumers from Australia to Great Britain and at all points in
between. But all was not well for the Columbia River canneries. A combination of factors,
including overfishing, the economic depression of 1893 and, most tellingly, the development
of rival Alaskan grounds, spelled the end for the Columbia River fishery. Though canneries
would continue to operate until the 1940s, the boom-and-bust cycle that had marked the
Sacramento salmon runs followed the Humes and their ilk to the Pacific Northwest.
The Alaskan salmon trade had a tremendous impact on West Coast maritime history:
from 1896 on, the yearly export of Alaskan salmon was worth more than the 7.2 million paid
to Russia for acquisition of the territory in 1867. 6 Until the development of oil fields in 1957
at Kenai and in 1977 at Prudhoe Bay, the salmon fishery remained the single most important
industry in Alaska, remaining economically more important than mining, lumbering, and
the fur trade combined. The process was not uncomplicated: the fish were highly perish-
able and had to be dried, salted, frozen, or preserved shortly after being caught. Canneries
provided the most viable alternative, requiring shoreside facilities near the fishing grounds.
The result was a major economic impact on local Alaskan communities.
Salmon fishing was not an external activity foisted on ignorant Alaskans. Long before
3 California Fish Commission, Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries of the State of California for the Years
1870 and 1871 (Sacramento; California Department of Fish and Game, 1872).
4 Richard White, The Organic Machine (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 40.
5 The first commercial fisheries in California were established by Cantonese gold rush immigrants who
operated a thriving fleet of junks that was gradually strangled into a smaller and less competitive industry
by racist regulations and laws. The first such community would be found in San Francisco's Rincon Point.
6 The first recorded catch was some two million cases, valued at $3,375,000 in 1889. US Commission on Fish
and Fisheries, 6 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1888), 7. Alaskan production totaled 4 million cases in 1912 and
reached an all-time high of 6.9 million cases in 1941.
113
Fishing and Whaling
the Russians or Americans came on the scene, natives had harvested salmon by a variety of
means. Using dip nets, squaw nets, wicker traps, fish wheels, bow and arrow, spear and gaff,
trolling, and other methods, Aleut and other native fishermen provided resources that were
central to the local diet. The native bounty was also dried and used as a buffer against the
long winter months. When the Russians moved into the area, they introduced the process
of salting salmon. By the 1860s, they were operating a pair of salting facilities: the first was
located at Old Sitka, and the second, opened in 1868, at Klawock on the West Coast of Prince
of Wales Island. Here, the fish were split, boned, salted, and packed in barrels. 7
Pushed north by declining fish stocks in the contiguous United States, and locked out
of the Canadian fisheries, American entrepreneurs looked north to Alaska for new fishing
ground to develop and exploit. They were by no means the first Americans interested in
Alaska's fishery. A thriving codfishery, with a fleet based in San Francisco, had existed since
shortly after the Civil War. 8 A shore station was established at Pirate Cove on Popof Island
in the Aleutian chain, but fish were mostly processed back in the contiguous United States.
By 1863, there were as many as twelve or fifteen San Francisco-based vessels employed
in the Alaskan codfishery, with most headed to the Bering Sea and an odd few to the Sea
of Okhotsk. An average of ten vessels fished annually in Alaskan waters for cod between
1860 and 1892, and prior to World War I, cod was the major catch of the Alaska handline
industry 9
One schooner in the 1870s attempted to bring back Alaskan salmon, salted in bulk
in the hold like cod, but the venture was never repeated. Instead, a method of salting the
salmon in barrels was developed, and several such cargoes reached San Francisco at the end
of each summer until the 1920s. Some of the shippers were known to spend the winter on
the road, selling their barrels offish to the saloonkeepers of the Central Valley, returning to
San Francisco in the spring to fit out their schooners for another voyage. Among the notable
participants in this trade was C. A. Thayer. Now a museum ship berthed at San Francisco's
Hyde Street Pier, the schooner is most known for its role in the West Coast lumber trade.
However, for a dozen years (1912-1924) she made seasonal runs to Alaska, departing in April
with a complement of fishermen, cannery workers, and supplies and returning at the end of
each summer with barrels of salted salmon. For some time afterward (1925-1930), Thayer
participated in the nascent Alaskan codfishery, illustrating another theme in the region's
maritime history.
In addition to salt-packed salmon, there were attempts to introduce canneries to the
region. The first Alaskan canneries opened in 1878, occupying the old Russian salteries,
The salmon industry on the Pacific Coast was also the product of the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort
Langley, established in the 1830s on the Fraser River in British Columbia. Traders shipped casks of
preserved salmon to distant ports, including Hawaii, with the Fraser becoming the center of an extensive
salmon fishery and cannery operation, the first of which was operated by Joseph Deas, an American-born
black refugee from US slavery, on an island that bears his name.
Among the first San Francisco vessels involved in the Alaskan cod trade was the brig Timandra, acquired
and captained by Matthew Turner. The cod were routinely caught by hook and line, in the manner of
the Grand Banks fishery, and salted on board. The three-masted schooners Louise and William H. Smith
were the last San Francisco vessels employed in this trade, departing the Golden Gate in 1931 and return-
ing two years later. Louise, a bald-headed three-masted schooner, had been built by Hans Bendixsen at
Fairhaven, California, in 1882.
Charles Melville Scammon, "The Pacific Coast Cod Fishery," Overland Monthly (May 1870): 436-40. See
also J. L. Weaver, Jr., "Salt Water Fisheries of the Pacific Coast," Overland Monthly (August 1892): 149-63.
114
Fishing and Whaling
and by the 1890s, these employed more than twenty San Francisco-based sailing ships.
As the Cape Horn trade dwindled, old ships gravitated to "West Coast ownership, many
finding employment as tenders for salmon canneries in Alaska. These sailed north each
spring, carrying fishing boats, lumber with which to enlarge cannery buildings, machinery,
coal, tin plates for cans, and all the food and supplies needed for the summer's operation.
Fishermen signed on as seamen to sail the ship, and a crew of Chinese cannery hands was
carried as passengers. 10 At the end of a successful season, the ships sailed back with cargoes
of canned salmon. The growth was rapid and extreme: by 1891, there were thirty-seven
competing canneries. That same year saw the first hatchery open in Alaska, with a trio of
canneries taking salmon from the Karluk River on Kodiak Island. Several other privately
sponsored hatcheries followed. Salmon provided 80 percent of the territory's tax revenue in
those years.
Generally, the Alaska fishery divided into two regions: southeast and western Alaska,
with the entire area separated by the Aleutians. Most of the early operations concentrated
on the southeastern market, until the Arctic Packing Company pushed into the western
region, opening a cannery at Nushagak in 1883. While the western fishery was more profit-
able (owing to the presence of sockeye salmon) only large, well-financed operations could
afford the increased associated costs (the relative isolation of the western canneries meant
that more capital was required to establish, maintain, and operate them, and nearly all
labor had to be imported from San Francisco and Seattle) attracted. By comparison, inde-
pendent contractors operated out of the southeast fisheries. The relative inaccessibility of
the western fishing grounds called for ships that could sail across more than 2,000 miles of
open, often stormy seas, bringing a season's pack of salmon home in the fall. Supplies and
workmen could be taken to the cannery and fishing sites by sea only: communities such as
Kvichak, Nushagak, Naknek, and Chignik owed their existence to these yearly connec-
tions. Production soon outpaced demand and prices plummeted: to counter this situation,
a temporary organization, the Alaska Packing Association, formed in 1891. Thirty-one of
the thirty-seven competing operations joined, agreeing to operate just nine canneries in the
following season. The strategy worked, and the "temporary organization" led to the forma-
tion of a corporation that nearly monopolized the Alaska salmon fishery thereafter.
Incorporated in 1893, the Alaska Packers Association (APA) was a model of Gilded
Age economic efficiency Led by Henry Fortmann, the APA succeeded in aligning twen-
ty-eight of the thirty-one canners then in operation, developing a profitable method of
seasonal canning plants with attached fishing crews. 11 Operating a fleet of thirty-two
square-riggers (including nineteen that bore the trademark "Star of. . ." designation), the
APA made seasonal runs to Alaska, bringing scores of Chinese laborers to man the canner-
ies. 12 Alterations to the vessels (including an expansion of the poop deck by some 75 feet)
provided ample living space for the Italian and Scandinavian fishermen. The Chinese
cannery workers, further segregated, lived forward in the cramped accommodations of the
10 Robert A. Nash, "The 'China Gangs' in the Alaska Packers Association Canneries, 1892-1935," in The
Life, Influence and the Role of the Chinese in the United States, 1776-1960, ed. Thomas W. Chinn (San
Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1976), 257-83.
11 Fortmann, who had previously led the Arctic Packing Company, would remain president of APA until 1922.
12 Harold Huycke, "Star Fleet" Yachting (February 1960): 1-5, and Harold Huycke, "The Great Star Fleet,"
Yachting (March 1960): 1-5.
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Fishing and Whaling
'tween deck. 13 Flying the distinctive swallow-tail pennant of APA, the ships would head
north on seasonal runs with a full complement of crew and cargo and return with the onset
of winter, usually laying up for repairs in the Oakland Estuary at a shipyard on the foot of
Alameda's Paru Street. 14 Repairs were needed, as navigating in fog-shrouded and unmarked
channels was hazardous at best. Although several ships survived near-catastrophic ground-
ings, other APA ships fell victim to the dangers of Alaska's waters. Raphael wrecked near
Karluk in 1895, and James A. Borland was lost on Gugidak Island the following year. In 1898,
the full-rigged Sterling gave her name to the shoals that mark the waters of the Bering Sea;
two years later, Merom was wrecked on the beach at Karluk. In the worst loss in the history
of the APA, Star of Bengal was lost with 110 souls after a spectacular wreck off Fort Wrangell
in southeastern Alaska in September 1908.
Originally, the APA utilized wooden Downeasters, many of which were chartered or
leased from lumbering operations in the Pacific Northwest, but by 1900,the company turned
to a fleet of secondhand iron and steel square-riggers. Ships were loaded with supplies
for the 2,500-mile run from San Francisco to Alaska; the whole summer's operation was
sustained by the supplies and manpower the sailing fleet carried. At the end of the fishing
season, the canned and boxed salmon were loaded in the holds of the southbound ships. The
entire operation lasted a scant seven months, but required a Herculean effort on the part of
employees. With a far-flung empire rivaling the vertically integrated oil and steel industries'
monopolies, the APA owned everything: ships, labor, and processing plants. Of course,
not all canners joined the APA. By 1898, there were 55 independent canneries working the
Alaska waters, including Libby, McNeil & Libby; the Nakat Packing Company (a subsid-
iary of A&P); and the Northwestern Fisheries Company (led by Frank A. Peterson and L.A.
"Hungry" Pedersen), some of which remained in operation well into the twentieth century. 15
Newcomers were undeterred by the might of APA: between 1914 and 1918, 53 new canner-
ies opened, as the industry expanded into canning pink and chum salmon. In 1917, with 118
canneries in operation, the region generated nearly six million cases of salmon, valued at $46
million. Two years later, 159 operators produced nearly nine million cases. None, however,
could rival the success of APA. 16
With an effective lobby in both Juneau and Washington, and only a negligible govern-
ment presence in the industry before the turn of the twentieth century, the APA prevented
government regulators from squelching their profits. While the Treasury Department was
tasked with enforcing fishing regulations in Alaska since 1868, it moved slowly. Their first
13 By one estimate, 86 percent of the cannery workers were Chinese; this amounted to about three thousand
seasonal Chinese workers labored in packing plants. By 1912, when cannery operators were openly calling
for the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, only 40 percent of cannery workers were Chinese, with most
hailing from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. US Congress, Senate. Alaska Fisheries: Hearings
before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Fisheries (Washington DC: GPO, 1912), 135.
14 Antioch, at the mouth of the San Joaquin River, was another favorite lay-up port for old ships, as the
freshwater found there kept the wood of a ship's hull free from marine borers such as the teredo worm,
introduced into local waters from the South Pacific in the 1860s. The Red Salmon and Nanek Packing
Companies, rivals of the APA, frequented this port as late as the 1930s.
15 The catch that year totaled 965,997 cases. Joan Antonson Mohr, Alaska and the Sea: A Survey of Alaska's
Maritime History, miscellaneous publication No. 24, Office of History and Archaeology, Alaska Division
of Parks (1979), 65-67.
16 A number of these independent canners — as well as APA — continued to operate into the 1960s, and Bristol
Bay still boasts an active salmon cannery.
116
Fishing and Whaling
action was an 1889 law that forbade the use of barricades employed by canners, which
prevented salmon from reaching their spawning grounds. Even here, progress was slow,
and not until 1892 was money appropriated to hire an inspector and assistant to enforce
this action. Late that same year, President Benjamin Harrison signed a bill to preserve the
dwindling fish stocks, reserving Afognak Island and all waters within one mile of its shore
as a cultural preserve, with no salmon to be taken except by Alaska natives for subsistence
purposes. 17
Predictably, the absence of effective regulations led to overfishing, with the canners
themselves first taking action to police the industry. The first legitimate government
response was not seen until 1899, when packers were taxed four cents per case; more
rigid enforcement came after 1903 with the establishment of Bureau of Fisheries in the
Department of Commerce and Labor. New mandates required each company to establish
hatcheries capable of producing four times the number of salmon taken. Few complied.
When the stick failed, authorities turned to the carrot. Beginning in 1906, hatchery compa-
nies would be reimbursed by the government. At that time, the federal government began
operating two hatcheries of its own: one at Ketchikan in southeastern Alaska and another
at Afognak Lake on Afognak Island in the south central part of the territory. Between 1906
and 1920, the federal government spent $525 million on their own hatcheries and another
$600 million on rebates to those operating their own facilities. The plan was a disaster and a
political boondoggle. In 1907, for example, during a year in which APA generated $3 million
in profits, the subsidy they received for operating a pair of hatcheries reduced their federal
taxes to less than one dollar.
The salmon fishery, while important, would not be able to sustain these profit margins.
Overfishing and changing consumer tastes led to a steady decline and the last voyage north
was made by Star of Alaska in 1930 — still afloat at the San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park's Hyde Street Pier under her original name, Balclutha. Another of the fleet,
Star of India, retired in 1923, is preserved at the San Diego Maritime Museum. Still, thanks
to increased regulations and more efficient fisheries management, Alaskan salmon remains a
viable fishery, and while no longer approaching its historic highs, remains among the state's
major industries.
Salmon, while the most numerous and profitable commercial fish on the West Coast,
was not the only one taken — by 1889, sardine fisheries dotted the central California coast,
giving rise to the famous Cannery Row in Monterey. At its height, the sardine industry in
Monterey employed 3,500 people at nineteen canneries, with over 450 boats catching over a
quarter-million tons offish.
17 In 1922, the reserve was enlarged and renamed the Alaska Peninsula Fish Reserve; later that year, the
Southwest Alaska Fisheries Reserve was likewise established. In 1924, both were revoked after Congress
passed an "Act for the Protection of the Fisheries of Alaska and for Other Purposes," which authorized
the federal government to manage Alaska fisheries for protection and conservation of the fish until Alaska
became a state. This act authorized the Secretary of Commerce to reserve areas, and set standards for
fishing gear (including nets, boats, and traps) to limit harvest in the area. Federal regulation of Alaska's
salmon fishery is somewhat unusual in that regulatory responsibility was generally the purview of a
particular territory.
117
Fishing and Whaling
China Camp
One of the more than two dozen Chinese shrimp-fishing communities that ringed San
Francisco Bay was located in San Rafael, on the northeastern shore of Point San Pedro.
What is now China Camp State Park was once one of the largest and longest-lived of
these communities. The 1870 census recorded 77 individuals living in 15 dwellings, but
by the following enumeration, there were 469 denizens, of whom 368 were directly
involved with the shrimp fishery. Others included a teacher, physician, and minister.
During the 1880s, nearly 500 Cantonese immigrants called this bucolic site home, and
the community featured a marine supply store, three general stores, and a barbershop.
Before racially inspired legislation forced them from the industry, Chinese were
heavily represented in the San Francisco shrimp fishery. Using locally available woods,
Chinese craftsmen constructed traditional junks and sampans, and used traditional,
though peculiar, cone-shaped nets staked out at right angles to the tide, to collect their
catch. Dried shrimp were exported to China, or sold locally by itinerant peddlers. It was
a lucrative business, and one of the few remaining to Chinese residents of the Golden
State. By the 1890s, however, hostility, violence, and racist legislation had taken even
this from the Chinese, and they were forced to abandon the practice. Thankfully, their
departure did not mean the loss of their skills and traditions to subsequent generations.
In summer 2003, a team of volunteers headed by the Small Craft Department
of the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park launched a replica junk Grace
Quan, which was crafted using traditional techniques and locally available materials.
The 43-foot replica — painstakingly recreated from period photographs, archaeologi-
cal evidence, and assorted other information — closely resembles the vessels that earlier
generations of China Camp fishermen used. It is currently housed among the collection
of historic ships berthed at Hyde Street pier.
Today, China Camp represents one of the few undeveloped stretches of water-
front along the Bay, and is the home to efforts to restore the tidal wetlands to their
original condition. The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is
managed by the State Parks Commission.
Likewise, a vibrant fishing community was found in San Francisco. Today, San
Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf is the second-most trafficked street in the state (after the
Disneyland Promenade) and caters to tourists from near and far, but it was once home to
a vibrant fishing community. 18 The original location of San Francisco's fishing community
was at North Beach, between Telegraph and Russian Hills, at the foot of Powell and Mason
Streets. In 1872, the state legislature provided for the creation of Columbus Avenue (in the
saddle between the aforementioned hills) to North Beach, and for the setting aside, "for the
sole and exclusive use of the fishermen of the city and county such place or places that shall
be deemed proper and sufficient." 19 This was at the foot of Union Street, under Telegraph
Hill, where Fisherman's Wharf remained until 1900, when the State Board of Harbor
18 Alessandro Baccari, Jr., San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006).
19 John Muir, "Tides of Change: Fisherman's Wharf, 1870-1930," Sea Letter 58 (Summer 2000): 8-13
118
Fishing and Whaling
Commissioners set aside the present location for the use of commercial fishermen. 20
Chinese immigrants, disappointed by their luck in the mines or displaced by racist-
inspired legislation (for example, the Foreign Miner's Tax of 1854), turned to fishing;
their stout junks and nimble sampans, with battened lug sails, familiar on the Bay from
an earlier period in pursuit of shrimp. 21 With the completion of the transcontinental rail-
road, their numbers swelled considerably. By 1870, there were nearly thirty shrimp camps
in the San Francisco Bay Area alone, ranging from a few dozen to several hundred resi-
dents — estimates place the number of Chinese fishermen in the Bay at over three thou-
sand. 22 Replete with schools, benevolent associations, temples, gambling dens, drying
and processing sheds, and saloons, they provided community for Chinese immigrants
where none could ordinarily be found. 23 Fishermen, fish peddlers, wholesalers, and others
involved in the processing and sale of the catch made up the majority of the camp's popu-
lace, although others, such as teachers and temple keepers, fleshed out this complement.
Additional communities were found in San Diego, Monterey, on offshore islands, and in the
Sacramento and San Joaquin delta, where Chinese fishermen sought shrimp, barracuda,
abalone, and other marine resources. 24
Before long, a series of laws were passed designed to force the Chinese from the fish-
eries. In 1860, the state legislature mandated a $4-per-month tax on the Chinese fishermen
(at a time when monthly incomes reached but $20 during the busiest of seasons and rarely
rose above $600 yearly). The state's first fishing license bill applied only to "Mongolian" fish-
ermen. Asian men, but not their white competitors, were required to purchase state licenses
to fish. 25 Subsequent legislation aimed to ban the Chinese from commercial fishing (1880),
forbade the export of dried shrimp (where 90 percent of the catch was sent) and outlawed
the use of bag nets favored by Chinese fishermen (the technique favored by the Chinese
shrimpers was to stake out nets at right angles to the tide and let the racing water fill them
with shrimp.) Arthur McEvoy revealed in his seminal work, The Fisherman's Problem, that
California's legislative efforts to preserve fish stocks in the late nineteenth century were
20 The association between today's Fisherman's Wharf and restaurateurs is not new. In 1849, near the pres-
ent-day site of Hyde Street Pier, Genoese immigrant Giusseppo Buzzoro opened the city's first Italian
restaurant aboard a sailing vessel whose crew had deserted for the gold fields. His most popular dish was
a meat and fish soup known as ciopin. San Francisco Progress, August 3, 1974.
21 Junks ranged from 40 to 60 feet, with a beam of 12 feet. Lacking a keel, they relied on a sternpost rudder
for stability. Sampans are flat-bottomed craft, designed to work inshore. Ranging from 15 to 25 feet, with
a breadth of 2-3 feet, they could easily be rowed and pulled up onto beaches where docks were nonexis-
tent. See Linda Bentz, "Redwood, Bamboo, and Ironwood: Chinese Junks of San Diego," Mains'l Haul: A
Journal of Pacific Maritime History 35, nos. 2-3 (1999): 14-21.
22 L. Eve Armentrout-Ma. "Chinese in California's Fishing Industry, 1850-1941," California History 60, no.
2 (1981): 142-57.
23 Robert Nash. "The Chinese Shrimp Fishery in California" (PhD diss., University of California, Los
Angeles, 1974). See also Murray Lee, "The Chinese Fishing Industry of San Diego," Mains'l Haul: A
Journal of Pacific Maritime History 35, nos. 2-3 (1999): 6-8, 10-13.
24 For a good local treatment of Chinese fishing communities in Southern California, consult Arthur F.
McEvoy, "'In Places Men Reject': Chinese Fishermen at San Diego, 1870-1893."/owr«a/ of San Diego
History 23, no. 4 (Fall 1977): http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/77fall/chinese. htm. .See also Judy
Berryman, "Chinese Abalone Fishermen on San Clemente Island," Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific
Maritime History 35, nos. 2-3 (1999): 22-27.
25 The law also applied to the few Japanese fishermen. Donald Estes, "'Silver Petals Falling':
Japanese Pioneers in the San Diego Fishery." Japanese American Historical Society of San Diego:
http://jahssd.org/silver-petals-falling/.
119
Fishing and Whaling
actually part of a larger state and federal effort to chase the Chinese from the lucrative West
Coast fisheries. 26
Even when seemingly complimentary toward Chinese fishermen, contemporary white
observers could be condescending. Noting the skill with which Chinese shrimpers worked
their craft, ichthyologist David Starr Jordan (later president of Stanford University) stated,
"the Chinese takes risks in stormy weather which no white man would dream of taking." 27
The implication, clearly, was that Chinese fishermen placed a lower value on human life
than did their white-skinned counterparts. Where formal discrimination failed, popular
prejudice did not. As one observer quipped: "No Chinamen are allowed to participate in it
(the salmon fishery). There is no law regulating the matter, but opinion is so strong in rela-
tion to it, and there is such a prejudice against the Chinamen, that any attempt on their part
to engage in salmon fishing would meet with a summary and probably fatal reaction." 28 No
less a figure than Rudyard Kipling described Chinese cannery workers as "yellow devils"
with "yellow, crooked fingers" and another stated unequivocally that any Chinese caught
fishing in the Columbia "would be killed on sight." 29 Jordan described Chinese cannery
workers as subhuman: "no other race of people could work at such low rates and upon
such terms," and cannery operators who sought to maximize their profits through automa-
tion further dehumanized their workers when they introduced the fish-butchering device
known as the "Iron Chink." 30
Soon, such racism forced the Chinese to abandon the trade, although it was by no
means an overnight change: well into the 1890s, as much as one-third of all California fish-
ermen were Chinese, and it should be noted that this group was instrumental in discovering
and developing many of California's fishing grounds and helping establish the commercial
fishery on the Pacific coast. 31 While the Chinese were a notable segment of the historic
California fishing industry, their activities were almost exclusively for the Chinese commu-
nity, either here or abroad, and they never figured prominently in the market fishery That
sphere was dominated by Italian, Portuguese, and other Mediterranean fishermen.
These relative newcomers also made important advancements. First, they introduced
a new vessel, the felucca, to the region. Double-ended, lateen-rigged, and festooned with
colorful names, the craft were manned by men called to the sea, fishermen to the core. The
earliest Italian fishermen were Genoese, though soon outnumbered by Sicilians who began
26 The McCreary Act of 1893 defined fishermen as laborers, who could thus be denied entrance to the
United States under the previous year's Chinese Exclusion Act. Arthur F. McEvoy, The Fisherman's
Problem: Ecology and Law in California's Fisheries, 1850-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986), 113-14.
27 David Starr Jordan, "The Fisheries of California," Northwest Magazine 20, no. 119 (November 1892):
469-78.
28 George Brown Goode and Joseph W. Collins, The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States,
Section 4: The Fishermen of the United States (Washington DC: GPO, 1887), 37-42.
29 Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel, vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday & McClure Company,
1899), 34-35.
30 Chris Friday, Organizing Asian American Labor: The Pacific Coast Canned Salmon Industry, 1870-1942
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 84-85.
31 Robert F. Walsh, "Chinese and the Fisheries in California," California Illustrated Magazine 4
(November 1893): 834.
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Fishing and Whaling
settling in the region in droves in the 1870s. 32 An 1880 census survey found that 92 percent
of San Francisco's commercial fishermen were foreigners, with the majority hailing from
Sicily. A correspondent for one of the local dailies described them:
The number of men employed in catching fish for home consumption and
export is from 500-600, about half of whom are Italians and the rest Americans,
Slavs, Greeks and Portuguese The Americans are mostly engaged in salmon
fishing at Rio Vista and above, while on the Sacramento and its tributaries and
sloughs below it is entirely in the hands of Italians. Of the total number, there
are distributed in the fisheries the following: salmon 200 men with 80 boats,
bay fishing 250 with 80; coast and inland, 60 with 15. There are also a score of
boats distributed at various points along the coast, where neighboring towns or
communication with the interior offer reward to the fisherman's industry. 33
The crews were also foreign, speaking in native tongues or some dialect unintelligible
to Americans; from their shacks on Telegraph Hill or on their workboats, they sang lusty
arias from Italian operas — one apocryphal tale suggests that when the opera troupe from //
Trovatore went on strike, the producers simply strolled down to the wharf and rounded up
forty fishermen, and that no rehearsals were necessary for that evening's performance. 34
The so-called smacks were traditionally green or white, with sails and cordage a rich
chocolate brown. In addition to cutting down on the blinding glare, the tanning of sails,
nets, and cordage protected them from mildew and rot. The docks around the wharf were a
veritable beehive of activity, with fishermen tending their nets (soaking them in vats of hot
liquid, for example) and others making necessary repairs to their craft or loading bait. 35 By
1885, steam engines began appearing in the fleet, and by 1912, a modified felucca, powered
by Hicks or Atlas gasoline engines and known as the "Monterey clipper," was the favorite
vessel of San Francisco fishermen. A correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle gave a
rich impression of the fleet as it existed in 1885:
There are somewhere about 150 fishing smacks in San Francisco Bay . . . about
70 of these are suited for fishing either inside the bay or outside the heads ... 60
are small boats used exclusively in crab fishing The larger boats have crews
of 3-5 and are employed exclusively in the rockcod fisheries outside the bay and
some of these go to the Farallones There are also three large steam trawlers
now, which devote themselves to deepwater fishing, the property of an incorpo-
rated company The fishing grounds are extensive: inside the bay off Alcatraz,
Angel Island, Lime Point, Goat Island and Hunter's Point there are reefs where
rockcod fishing is good at almost any season, and in summer a string of fish-
ing boats may be seen almost any day extending from shore to shore across the
32 The earlier generations often operated out of waters closer to the gold fields. Among the most popular
sites were Martinez and Pittsburgh, close to their boats moored in Alhambra Creek or Portuguese Flats.
By 1882, the Contra Costa Gazette counted 250 fishing craft in the vicinity, and a trio of canneries grew
up in Benicia and Martinez to process the catch.
33 "Fishing and Fishermen," Daily Alta California, May 10, 1872.
34 San Francisco Progress, August 3, 1974.
35 Deanna P. Gumina, "The Fishermen of San Francisco Bay: The Men of 'Italy Harbor,'" Pacific Historian
(Spring 1976): 8-21.
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Fishing and Whaling
bay A felucca rigged boat costs about $500 and her nets and rigging from
$500 to $1000 more . . . without considering the trawlers, then, there is $100,000
to $150,000 invested in the San Francisco fleet. Adding the trawlers to this fleet
brings the total to $200,000 minimum. 36
What commodities were these fishermen pursuing? Shellfish, long present in
great numbers and the source of native diets for centuries, provide another subfield of
California's maritime history. With the influx of people to the region in the mid-nineteenth
century, local stands were nearly exhausted. Shellfish were one of the most accessible and
vital of all tidal resources in the Bay, and hungry Argonauts were quick to scoop them up.
Edwin Bryant, reporting on the eve of the discovery of gold, reported finding fossilized
oyster shells "of eight inches in length and of corresponding breadth and thickness." 37 One
journalist described the scene in the wake of the gold rush: "The mud flats up in Happy
Valley present an interesting view at low tide About a thousand more or less of the great
unwashed tribe of this city are there busily engaged in gathering crabs and clams on which
the city epicures may feast It is an interesting occupation, and the followers of it are
usually up to their knees in the delicately scented mud that abounds in the classic vicinity of
Rincon Point." 38
From this unorganized activity came a more concerted effort. When the easy-to-
reach mollusks were depleted, other sources needed to be found, requiring boats, labor,
and capital. Whereas feluccas were used primarily outside the Golden Gate, fishermen
within the Bay preferred the smaller "San Francisco Bay Plunger." Ranging from 15 to
18 feet long, they were well suited for crab fishing and allowed for nimble maneuver-
ing along the meandering rocky coastline. Although there were native oysters in the
tidelands on the west side of the Bay, it was not until after Atlantic coast oysters were
imported and planted there that business developed of taking them on a large scale. 39
Several groups emerged in this field after 1870, finally consolidating into the Morgan
Oyster Company, formed in 1887 by Captain John Stillwell Morgan and four partners.
In the half century between 1870 and 1920, oystering represented the state's most valu-
able fishery as commercial oyster growers fenced large areas of San Francisco Bay and
constructed a series of raised oyster houses amid the fenced beds wherein oysters were
processed and watchmen were housed to dissuade thieves. (Oysters were but one species
purposely introduced: in 1879, shad were introduced into the Sacramento River in 1871,
and in 1879, striped bass from New Jersey's Nevesink River were introduced into the
Carquinez Strait.) The year 1888 marked high water for oyster operations in the Bay,
which netted $1.25 million in profits. In the period between 1888 and 1904, oystermen
averaged $500,000, earning more than any California fishery save whaling. By that time,
36 "Fishermen of San Francisco," San Francisco Chronicle, February 16, 1886.
37 Quoted in Joshua Paddison, ed., A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California before the Gold
Rush (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1999), 284.
38 Daily Alta California, April 13, 1851.
39 This touched off a series of bio-invasions in the bay. While the first documented case of a marine invasive
species had occurred in the 1850s in Oakland (Chilean sand fleas brought in as part of ballast) the influx
associated with oystering was dramatic. With a new species introduced on average every fourteen weeks,
San Francisco Bay is the most heavily invaded estuary in the world, with nonnative species comprising
over 90 percent of the biomass today.
122
Fishing and Whaling
environmental destruction had caused the business to be less profitable than anticipated,
and established "camps" were abandoned or sold for other uses. 40
The prime fishing grounds were located off Ocean Beach, past the Golden Gate in the
open Pacific. More intrepid fishermen might make their way to the region between Pigeon
Point and Monterey, harvesting waters that ranged from fifteen to sixty fathoms deep. The
rough waters required skill to keep the boats off the rocks, strength to row when the winds
died down, and daring to bring the skiffs in over the bar when the surf was breaking. One
contemporary expressed amazement at the fishermen's audacity: "I have seen them coming
in over the inner bar, when it was breaking heavily, and the little craft would seem to stand
perpendicular, now on the sternpost and now on the stem." 41 While the fleet was established
with the gold rush and expanded in the 1870s, its prime — at least from the fisherman's point
of view — was during the 1930s, with some 500 boats in the fleet, including about 300 crabbers.
The remainder was composed mostly of purse seiners, large enough for a crew ranging from
six to sixteen, referred to as the "sardine navy." Sardine fishing, likewise, was a short-lived
phenomenon. It started in San Francisco Bay during World War I, reached great proportions
in the interwar period, then declined precipitously after 1944. By as late as 1948, there were
over 100 purse seiners employed in the trade, taking as much as 12,000 tons of sardines in any
twenty-four-hour period. 42 At the height of the sardine fishery, commercial vessels engaged
in this occupation numbered 466, with an additional 257 operating out of Sacramento. While
this number was large, it reflects only one-third of the nearly 2,500 California fishing boats
then in operation. 43 Some 40 canneries processed the catch between the two world wars, until
the local stock was exhausted. By the 1940s, with soldiers and statesmen from around the
world descending on the region, the wharf gained an international reputation. By 1960, there
was still a flourishing commercial fleet of over 280 vessels, but rising costs, decrepit amenities
and, most notably, declining stocks, spelled the end of an era. 44 By the mid-1970s, fewer than
40 boats remained in San Francisco, which former fisherman Frank Taormina called "the
worst commercial fishing port on the Pacific Coast." 45
The reasons for the decline of San Francisco's fishing fleet are many and varied. Lack
of attention to amenities (while other ports provided hot showers, laundry facilities, and
rest areas, Fisherman's Wharf had but two rusty and battered portable toilets); unprotected
anchorages (tidal surges routinely damaged the craft — an Army Corps of Engineers break-
water that provided a haven for 350 berths was deemed overly costly at $9 million, but was
completed in the 1980s); and deteriorated conditions (no security guards, scarce dockside
40 Matthew Booker, "Oyster Growers and Oyster Pirates in San Francisco Bay," Pacific Historical Review 75,
no. 1 (2006): 63-88. Mark Twain equated the theft of oysters with a criminal activity, on par with massa-
cre, rape, and the firebombing of churches. Most of the oyster beds were located in the south Bay. Upon
their decline, many of the abandoned facilities were converted to saltworks. The first salt ponds had been
established in San Francisco Bay in 1854, and there were eighteen in operation by 1868.
41 Gumina, "Fishermen of San Francisco Bay," 11.
42 John Haskell Kemble, San Francisco Bay: A Pictorial Maritime History(New York: Cornell Maritime
Press, 1957), 105.
43 An additional enterprise centered around salt makers, who trapped the saline of the bay and marketed
it to canneries. In 1868, eighteen salt companies employed 150 workers, producing 10,000 tons of salt
garnering about $80,000 in the process.
44 John S. Bolles and Ernest Born, A Plan for Fisherman's Wharf: Comprising the Fisherman's Wharf-Aquatic
Park Area (San Francisco: San Francisco Port Authority, 1961).
45 Wall Street Journal, August 7, 1974.
123
Fishing and Whaling
water and power sources, a declining number of local equipment purveyors) all combined
to work against the existence of a viable commercial fleet. Perhaps most vexing, however,
was the reality of the fisherman's situation. Years of overfishing and exploitation of natural
resources, made possible by new technologies and ancient greed, drastically reduced the
available stocks of salmon, crab, sardines, and other mainstays of the San Francisco fish-
ery. A limited market fishery that specializes in rockfish, salmon, and crab is still based at
Fisherman's Wharf, but today, there is just one commercial herring fishery at work in San
Francisco, though it too has been in steep decline in recent years. Still, the existence of the
herring fishery is a testament to both the resiliency of the Bay and to the connections the
very first commercial fisheries established some 150 years ago. 46
While the fleet could no longer rival its former prominence, there remains in
the region a strong ethnic flavor and countless seafood restaurants. At first, fishermen
operating out of San Francisco sold their catch directly to consumers from their boats.
Occasionally, they strolled through the surrounding neighborhoods, selling fish to house-
wives and local establishments. Some of these, such as one opened by Tomaso Castagnola
in 1914, catered mainly to the fishermen themselves. Before the 1920s, the descendants of
early fishing families lined the wharf with huge iron pots, offering boiled crabs to passersby.
By the 1920s, restaurants began replacing the iron-pot stands. Nunzio Alioto founded
his eponymous establishment in 1925, and ten years later Mike Giraldi opened his "Little
Fisherman." 47 Intrepid entrepreneurs operating out of the wharf continue to take sport-
fishermen out in pursuit of halibut, sturgeon, striped bass, and assorted other commodi-
ties. Today, these and similar establishments — and day-trippers who take tourists out for
short portages to the Golden Gate — are virtually all that remain of the once-extensive San
Francisco fishing community.
In addition to a strong fishing industry, there was a long-established whaling
presence in California. Whalers provided another avenue of egress for Americans into
California, adding to the small numbers of fur trappers and hide-and-tallow merchants
who called at California ports before the gold rush. According to historian David Igler,
who compiled an exhaustive database of every known vessel that entered California
waters between 1786 and 1848, 26 percent of the 953 vessels that called at Alta California
ports were engaged in whaling. 48 In the fall of each year, whalers from throughout the
North Pacific descended on the region to refill their water casks and repair their vessels;
they were summarily set upon by ravenous merchants eager to separate the whalemen
from their pay. Until the first use of petroleum as an illuminant in 1869 — an event that
had major maritime implications for San Francisco and California — whaling provided
the main source of incandescent oil. A variety of other products, including ambergris
(used in perfumes), whale meat (including the tongue, which was considered a delicacy
among European nobles), bone (used for decorative scrimshaw and in other applica-
46 In addition to commercial fisheries, the Bay provided outlets for recreational and subsistence activities, as
well. Interesting information about such activities can be found in "Recollections of an Old Timer," South
of Market Journal, June 1926, and "The Tar Flat Boys Direct a Stranger to Long Bridge: A Reminiscence by
James H. Roxburgh of San Francisco's Waterfront," South of Market Journal, August 1933.
47 Nunzio's son, Frank, later drove a Cadillac festooned with a gold crab as hood ornament. San Francisco
Examiner, June 26, 1975.
48 David Igler, "Diseased Goods: Global Exchanges in the Eastern Pacific Basin, 1770-1850," American
Historical Review 109, no. 3 (June 2004): 693-719.
124
Fishing and Whaling
tions), and baleen (the plastic of its day, used for everything from corsets to buggy whips
and carriage springs), made whaling a highly profitable, if often deadly (for men and
whales alike), endeavor. Originally, whalers operated out of New England ports, with
New Bedford and Nantucket being the most pronounced, but as Atlantic stocks depleted,
it was recognized that entree into the Pacific was necessary to continue making money.
The British whaler Emelia was the first to enter the region, calling at South Pacific ports
in 1787. She was followed closely by others; in 1791, seven American whalers called at
Valparaiso, Chile. These early American whalers frequented the Sandwich Islands,
preferring the ports of Honolulu and Lahaina, where captains rendezvoused to acquire
provisions, filled out their complement of sailors with knowledgeable and reliable kana-
ka, and avoided the imperial proscriptions that made California unattractive. 49
Whalers were first seen in California waters by the 1820s (the first to call at San
Francisco was the British ship Orion, which deposited William Richardson in that city.) 50
On October 12, 1823, a small fleet of four American whalers from New England ports —
Alert (139 tons, Charles Ray, master); Gideon (204 tons, Obed Clark, master); Ploughboy (391
tons, William Chadwick, master); and Almira (362 tons, Timothy Daggett, master) — made
their way through the Golden Gate in search of fresh wood and potable water. Finding the
wells in Yerba Buena inaccessible and the springs on Angel Island dry, they made their way
to a protected anchorage in Sausalito (Richardson's Bay). News spread rapidly that San
Francisco Bay had accommodations for all whalers and trade regulations far less strident
than those found in Sausalito. By 1836, the cove was known the world over and illicit trade
only served to rankle colonial officials. 51
The presence of bowhead whales, first taken in 1843, led to major American incur-
sion into the region, and an increased presence in San Francisco. Indeed, of more than
seventy American ports involved in whaling, only three — Nantucket, New Bedford, and
Provincetown — outfitted more whalers than San Francisco. By 1846, the same year that
American pioneers raised the Bear Flag over Sonoma, nearly three hundred whalers
headed for the North Pacific. The rush of whalemen to the North Pacific made Americans
familiar with this coast, and in the course of years, many of their ships came to San
Francisco to get fresh water and provisions. 52 By the mid-1840s, when whalers composed
45 percent of the US merchant fleet, William Heath Davis reported that there were "as
many as thirty or forty whalers were in the bay (San Francisco) at any one time They
generally had on board a few thousand dollars' worth of goods for trading, and were
allowed by the customhouse authorities to exchange goods for supplies for their own
use, at any point they touched along the coast, to the extent of $4000 but they were not
allowed to sell any goods for cash." 53 In their letters home, sailors wrote in glowing terms
of the grand bay, which was undoubtedly well adapted by its position and circumstances,
49 See Eric Jay Dolan, Leviathan: A History of Whaling in America (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2007).
50 See Lloyd C. M. Hare, Salted Tories: The Story of the Whaling Fleets of San Francisco (Mystic, CT: Mystic
Seaport Press, 1960).
51 Richard William Crawford, "Whalers from the Golden Gate: A History of the San Francisco Whaling
Industry, 1822-1908" (master's thesis, San Diego State University, 1981).
52 During his hydrographic survey in 1826, Captain Frederick Beechey of HMS Blossom counted seven
American whalers at Richardson Bay (Sausalito) alone, taking on freshwater and firewood.
53 Cited in Andrew Rolle, An American in California: The Biography of William Heath Davis, 1822-1909 (San
Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1956).
125
Fishing and Whaling
to become the chief American seaport on the Pacific. Thomas Larkin of Monterey, for
example, in an advertisement he ran in a New Bedford periodical, gushed about "El
Puerto de los Balleneros" (the port of whalers):
There are sufficient buildings for storage and . . . the interior of the country has
every facility of supplying whalers with refreshment immediately upon arrival.
This port offers many inducements to visit In the months from September to
December they are in general sure to find vegetables here, and can find no better
port in the Pacific as far as regards health. Although California is now one of the
Mexican Departments, and duly bound to follow the laws of Mexico, yet such
is not always the case. Laws are often made here to suit the place and the times,
even to annulling parts of the Mexican Tariff. 54
In May, he wrote to Moses Yale Beach of the New York Sun, pointing out that "in two
or three years there will be 2000 American seamen fishing within ten or fifteen days sail
of this country. This is sufficient to point out the advantages presented in the Port of San
Francisco The harbor and its bays will hold perhaps all the vessels in the world." 55
As Spanish suzerainty gave way to Mexican authority, San Francisco, with its deep-
water access, became a preferred destination of whalers, who contributed to fix the deter-
mination of the American government to acquire the bay and its vicinity. While captains
eschewed that port during the height of the gold rush (few wanted to expose their crews to
the temptations of the Sierras), it became the center of the American whale fishery by the
onset of the Civil War. By 1857, ten vessels operated out of San Francisco, and in the follow-
ing year, the Pacific Oil and Camphene Works was established in that city to process sper-
maceti and sperm oil. 56
While San Francisco was the premier whaling port in the American Pacific during
this period, it was by no means the only one. A shore whaling station was in operation at
Monterey by 1851, joined a few years later by a Portuguese firm that eventually merged
with its American predecessor. 57 Moderately successful, but short-lived stations were
likewise established at more than a dozen points along the California coast: at Crescent
City, Carmel, Half Moon Bay, Santa Cruz, Davidson, Pigeon Point, Pillar Point, and other
communities. At San Diego, a whaling station came into being as early as 1856. The prin-
cipal prey of these whalers was the California gray whale, which skirted the coastline in
its annual migration from the Sea of Cortes to the Pacific Northwest. 58 Over the years,
a number of companies engaged in that business there, but those of Tilton, Johnson &
Company, and Packard & Company were the most conspicuous. Operating at Ballast Point
at the entrance to San Diego Harbor, they each produced nearly 1,000 barrels of oil — at $10
per barrel on the open market — by the time of the American Civil War. 59 While the profit
54 Harlan Hague and David J. Langum, Thomas O. Larkin: A Life of Patriotism and Profit in Old California
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990).
55 Boyd Huff, El Puerto de Los Balleneros: Annals of the Sausalito Whaling Anchorage
(Los Angeles: Glen Dawson, 1957).
56 Other local refineries included the California Oil Works and the New Bedford Oil and Camphene Works.
57 That same year the whaling bark Russell, out of New Bedford, was the first to receive registry at San Francisco.
58 Breeding grounds off Baja California had been discovered by Charles Scammon in 1857.
59 The average gray whale produced somewhere in the neighborhood of 35-40 barrels of oil.
126
Fishing and Whaling
could be considerable, the costs were extreme: estimates of the numbers of targeted whale
lost ranged from 20-33 percent, an attrition rate hard to reconcile with the investment in
time and resources required of a whaling voyage. With the inevitable decrease in the gray
whale populations, the shore whaling stations fell into serious decline; by 1900, only the one
at Monterey remained in operation. 60
While shore whaling decreased, steam technology opened access to new hunting
grounds. By 1867, the year America acquired Russian Alaska, 77 whalers produced over
50,000 barrels of oil and more than 800,000 pounds of bone from whales taken in Arctic
waters. 61 In 1883, the Pacific Steam Whaling Company was formed to bring together previ-
ously competing groups, and the next year, the Arctic Oil Works was established in Portero
to refine, transport, and trade in whale oil. The Pacific Steam Whaling Company introduced
the use of steam whaling barks, a vessel that became the hallmark of the San Francisco
whalefishery. Between 1884 and 1894, over 40 active whalers called the City by the Bay
home, and from 1885 until 1905, San Francisco was the principal whaling port in the world,
with its wooden steamers bringing profitable cargoes of oil and whalebone, which were
transported to customers via the transcontinental railroad that offered a cheap means of
carrying refined oil to the markets of the industrial East and Midwest. With the transfer of
the center of American whaling to the Pacific coast, many New England boatbuilders trans-
ferred their operations to California. 62 The New Bedford firm of J. C. Beetle, for example,
opened a yard in Alameda, building whaleboats.
Repairs were not all one could get in San Francisco. Beginning in 1882, the firm of
Dickie Brothers was producing steam whaleships, including its first version, the 533-ton
auxiliary steamer Bowhead, turned out for Charles Goodall. Beginning in 1889, a number
of San Francisco-based whaleships wintered at Herschel Island, spending several months
there each year. 63 But there were serious challenges to the American whalefishery by this
time. The depredations of the Confederate commerce raider Shenandoah severely injured
the fleet, with as many as forty vessels captured or lost to that ship and its commander,
James Waddell. Those fortunate enough to escape his attacks were still threatened by
conditions over which they had little control. Each year, shifting ice floes threatened to
crush vulnerable ships in the Arctic waters; in the winter of 1871-1872, over thirty vessels
were lost in such conditions, further weakening what had once been a robust fleet. By 1908,
60 The industry enjoyed a brief resurgence in the years after World War II, when a whaling station
opened at Point San Pablo in 1947. The last active station in the United States, it closed only when the
anti-whaling treaty was ratified in 1972. For a look at whaling in Southern California, consult F. Ross
Holland, Jr. "Shore Whaling on the California Coast," in They Came from the Sea: A Maritime History
of San Diego, ed. Carl F. Reupsch (San Diego: Cabrillo Historical Association, 1979). See also Ronald V.
May, "Dog-Holes, Bomb-Lances, and Devil-Fish: Boom Times for the San Diego Whaling Industry,"
Journal of San Diego History 32, no. 2 (1986): https://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/86spring/
dogholes.htm; Richard Crawford, "The Whalemen of San Diego Bay," Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific
Maritime History 19 (1983): 3; and Thomas Leo Nichols, "California Shore Whaling, 1850-1900"
(master's thesis, CSU Northridge, 1983).
61 John Bockstoce, Steam Whaling in the Western Arctic (New Bedford: Old Dartmouth Historical Society,
1977). See also James W. Vanstone, "Commercial Whaling in the Arctic Ocean," Pacific Northwest
Quarterly 49, no. 1 (January 1958): 1-10.
62 Robert Lloyd Webb, "Power Whaling: Industrial Shore Whaling on the West Coast, 1905-1972," Mains'l
Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 37, no. 1 (2001): 30-46.
63 See David Hull and Michael Dobrin, "Herschel Island: San Francisco's Outpost on a Lonely Arctic Coast,"
Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 40, no. 1 (2004): 44-56. See also R. R. Leet, "American
Whalers in the Western Arctic, 1879-1914" (master's thesis, San Francisco State University, 1974).
127
Fishing and Whaling
the price of whalebone collapsed, the increased production of natural gas and petroleum
made whale oil less desirable, and the last of the Pacific Steam Whaling Company vessels
was laid up in 1910.
William Shorey
Born in Barbados in 1859, William Thomas Shorey was apprenticed by his West Indian
mother and Scottish father to a career as a plumber. Not liking this trade, the young
Shorey shipped out on a Boston-based merchant ship and quickly took a liking to the
sea. Arriving in New England, he shipped out on a whaler, embarking on a global jour-
ney that would ultimately deposit him in San Francisco. Along the way, he rose through
the ranks of the ship, advancing from greenhand to first mate as a result of his hard
work and physical prowess.
Shorey sailed out of San Francisco for the next quarter century, eventually attain-
ing the rank of master on a number of notable West Coast whaleships. As San Francisco
became the center of the American whalefishery, Shorey's voyages took him from the
Sea of Japan to the Arctic Circle and from the Hawaiian Islands to Mexico and the Sea of
Okhotsk. As the only person of color in command of a San Francisco-based vessel, he
attained a level of respect unheard of in Jim Crow America and unrivalled in Victorian-
era California. His reputation as a skilled and fearless captain was clouded, though, by
his violent temper and participation in the shady labor market of the day. Brought up on
charges of cruelty to seamen, he was pilloried in the press but acquitted of all charges,
even though the complainants were whites and Shorey was not.
Shorey married into a prominent San Francisco family and raised five children in
his West Oakland residence. Deeply involved in the wider community, he held leader-
ship positions in a number of denominational and secular organizations. He retired from
the sea in 1907, but maintained his license until his death from pneumonia in 1919. The
career of William Thomas Shorey is at once remarkable and emblematic: the struggles he
faced as a person of color, the brutal conditions of the American whalefishery, and the
role of maritime San Francisco in this epic saga are all on display in his brilliant rise from
plumber's apprentice to "Black Ahab of the Bay."
Images courtesy
Oakland Public
Library and
National Park
Service.
128
Fishing and Whaling
Just as fishing provided opportunities for immigrants and those on the margins of
American society, whaling also offered an avenue to respectability. As seen in the works of
Jeffrey Bolster, James Farr, and others, the American whalefishery was disproportionately
composed of African Americans. 64 This is as true of the San Francisco iteration of whal-
ing as it was of its earlier incarnations. The tale of William Shorey is particularly illustra-
tive. Born in the Caribbean, he rose through the ranks of the whalefishery to become
master of several American whalers, proving that the racial boundaries then extant in Jim
Crow America were largely confined to terrestrial domains. His career spanned several
decades and showed the fluid nature of maritime San Francisco and the mutability of race
at sea. While the story might be unique, it is indicative of the opportunities and challenges
presented by the fishing and whaling industries, providing an important window into the
maritime milieu of California during the latter years of the nineteenth century. 65 Issues of
race and class in maritime California will be covered more fully in following chapters.
64 W. Jeffrey Bolster, "'To Feel Like a Man': Black Seamen in the Northern States, 1800-1860," Journal of
American History 76 (1990): 1173-200; and James Farr, "Slow Boat to Nowhere: Multi-racial Crews of the
American Whaling Industry," Journal of Negro History 68, no. 2 (Spring 1983): 159-70.
65 On Shorey, see Timothy G. Lynch. "'Black Ahab': William Shorey and the San Francisco Whalefishery,"
in Perspectives on Race, Class and Gender in Maritime America, ed. Glenn Gordinier (Mystic, CT: Mystic
Seaport Press, 2008). See also Daphne Lagios, "Bold Lines Connect: The Shoreys, a Unique Maritime
Family," Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 34, no. 1 (1998): 28-35.
129
Fishing and Whaling
A traditional Chinese junk, Quock See
Wo, was built at Hunters Point in 1906 and
licensed for the shrimp trade from February
28 of that year to February 9, 1916.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. B07.10526pl.
This image shows feluccas off Sausalito, ca. 1900. Straight-bowed double-enders, they were
lateen rigged and retained many of the features of their Mediterranean forebears. Ideal
for conditions inside the Golden Gate, they were used to catch herring, salmon, crab, and
shrimp. By the turn of the century, they were outfitted with one-cylinder gas engines and
could venture outside the Gate. By the 1920s, the sails had been abandoned altogether, the
boat further modified by the addition of a high-rising "Monterey clipper bow" to keep the
vessel dry in the rough waters outside the Gate.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. P. Borrman collection. B11.24, 153.
130
Fishing and Whaling
Perilous conditions awaited fishermen who
ventured to Alaska, as this image shows.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. G11. 3842.
The Alaska Packers fleet wintering in Alameda.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. B11.21, 925 psl.
131
Fishing and Whaling
The fishing industry was quickly mechanized
to process greater quantities at lower cost.
At left, a fish ladder is used to expeditiously
move the catch from ship to cannery Below,
a hand-operated cutting machine and the
insensitively named "Iron Chink" at work
and a mechanized cannery operation at
Astoria, Oregon.
The "Iran Chink* vf the late 1910s skwlywadt its way into tht t&nntriei dttpitt the
liaims if its iH&tiufattUTeT that it reflated many workers (Curtis Wratfl, Special
Colleetiew, Vniotmty of Wtwtnngtm, negative no. 58156)
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. G11. 21318.
132
Fishing and Whaling
Undated view of vessels of the Morgan Oyster Company, Redwood City, California, at the
packing-house pier.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. B12 .489nl.
Undated view of the two-masted schooner President, built in 1891, at rest in the
San Francisco oyster beds.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. B6 .487n.
133
CHAPTER 8
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
While fishing might be the most obvious manifestation of maritime activities that occurred
within the confines of San Francisco Bay, it was clearly not the only — nor even the primary —
such activity. Cargoes as diverse as hay, bricks, lumber, and assorted goods — not to mention
a large number of people — routinely transited the Bay, from smaller landings like Alviso
and San Leandro, to Petaluma and all points between. Before completion of the bridges and
highways that currently crisscross the region, the quickest, safest, cheapest, and most reli-
able means of moving goods and people was by water. This chapter looks at the use of ferries
and schooners in the evolution of maritime San Francisco.
Until the gold rush, there was little need for any ferry or schooner service. The small
number of passengers seeking transportation, coupled with the limited number of goods
or supplies needed to sustain the community at Yerba Buena, meant few were inclined
to participate in the business. California's inland commerce was carried on by means of
launches, or sloops and schooners of fifteen and twenty tons burthen, used chiefly for hide-
droghing purposes. The coast trade was confined to a half-dozen brigs and schooners,
running between San Francisco and the Columbia River, or the southern ports of Santa
Cruz, Monterey, and San Pedro, and a Mexican port or two. Soon, however, the growth of
the regions' population and the need to sustain it created a need for a workboat designed to
carry bulk goods and produce on the waters of the Bay and its tributaries. The ubiquitous
scow schooner, an interesting local vessel, filled this niche.
Scow schooners were extremely useful craft, carrying a variety of cargoes during their
decades of prominence. A shallow draft made it possible for scow schooners to load grain,
hay, and farm products in creeks and sloughs that other craft could not penetrate, thereby
integrating comparatively isolated regions of the Bay with the city of San Francisco. While
sailing scows were not original to San Francisco, those found on the Bay — notably center-
board scow schooners — appear to have developed independently during the middle years of
the nineteenth century. A Santa Cruz builder dubbed one of his 1848 creations Bloody Box,
but no incontrovertible evidence of scow schooners exists until their depiction in a series of
photographs from 1860, by which time they were already popular. By the turn of the centu-
ry, there were between 200 and 400 scow schooners working the bay and rivers, carrying
lumber and supplies upriver to agricultural regions, and returning with hay, grain, and farm
produce. These were complemented by cargoes of sand (out of the city) and brick (toward
San Francisco) that formed a regular, if inglorious, economic system. With no premium on
speed, there was little demand for technological improvements, and the same design that
was featured in the 1860s remained prominent a half century later.
While the general design of the scow might have remained unchanged, owners
quickly realized the advantage of motorized power, and engines made their way into the
fleet as soon as they became available. The first motor scow was seen scurrying to and from
the city by the time of the epic 1906 earthquake, but by 1920, they had made significant
inroads. Of the sixty-four scow schooners still in operation at that date, only a small hand-
ful remained powered by wind. But theirs was a fleeting day — with the advent of freeways
134
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
and bridges, scow schooners became obsolete as trucks hauled the cargos they once
carried. By 1959, only one (Alma) remained. Today, she is on display at the San Francisco
Maritime Museum's Hyde Street Pier. 1
Scows like^ma were built in an unnumbered profusion of places from Yerba Buena
to Benicia, though by 1900, most of the construction and repair had long been centered in
Hunter's Point at the yards of Hans Anderson, J. S. Nichols, John J. Dirks, H. C. Thompson,
Fred Seimer, and Emil Munder. The vessels were cheap to build and operate, easy to load,
and required no tow or engine. As such, they could turn a useful profit in no time. Historian
Roger Olmsted characterized them as "cheap, strong, and burdensome craft that did the
most work for the least cost." 2 The utilitarian craft were flat-bottomed with a square stern
and bow, with lines that translated to steadiness and longevity. The vessels were surprisingly
nimble, handling well under various conditions, tacking easily, and easily maneuvering in
close quarters, all without sacrificing speed or ease of use. Their names reflected their vital-
ity: at any time on the Bay, one might encounter Artful Dodger, Poor Champion, Witch of the
Bay, or Rough and Ready. The craft often beat yachts in Master Mariner races (common on
the Bay in the 1870s and 1880s), despite being often outclassed (scows ranged from 11 tons
for the 37-by-15-foot Star to 142 tons for the 89-by-31-foot Mono).While many a deepwater
sailor scoffed at the scow schooners, referring to them as "big square boxes with sails set,"
it was the very same salts who most often owned and operated the craft. 3 This is not overly
surprising, as scow schooners had many advantages over deepwater sail: one could earn
better money, avoid the hazards of an open ocean crossing, and enjoy the possibility of
something approaching a regular home life.
Alma
The flat-bottomed scow schooner Alma is the last remaining example of the 400 or so
craft comprising San Francisco's fleet in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Scow
schooners were the work-a-day vessels of maritime San Francisco, and while they shared
characteristics with many that were in operation throughout the United States (particular-
ly in the Chesapeake Bay), they have virtually disappeared: Alma is the last known exam-
ple still afloat. Her rough-hewn Douglas fir planking carried diverse cargoes but limited
her to inland channels. Beached on the Alviso shore in 1957, she was nearly lost and
forgotten: strewn amidst rubble and debris, she was fated to be part of the encroaching
bay-fill substrate. With a $500 appropriation from the California State Park System, and
a dedicated team of volunteers and ship preservationists, Alma was rescued from this
fate. Under a full moon on August 17, 1959, she was towed to Oakland by a tug opera-
tor whose grandfather had been the scow's first owner. Originally operating as a floating
work platform for other museum ships, she was reconditioned and by 1968 had taken
her place as a museum ship in her own right.
See Anita Mozley, "Scow Schooners of San Francisco Bay," Sea Letter 5, no. 1 (December 1967): 1-3. See
also Roger R. Olmsted, Square-Toed Packets: Scow Schooners of San Francisco Bay (Cupertino: California
History Center, 1988).
Roger Olmsted, Scow Schooners of San Francisco Bay, 1849-1949 (master's thesis, University of Nevada,
Reno, 1955), 18.
Mozley, "Scow Schooners," 2.
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Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
Scows like Alma had been built specifically for the local conditions of San Francisco
Bay. The standard model sacrificed beauty for utility. Flat bottomed and shallow drafted,
scows were easy to maneuver in narrow inlets and sloughs. The heavy centerboard struc-
ture allowed for a carrying capacity twice its tonnage. At 59 feet by 22 feet, Alma is fairly
typical of her class: her only unusual feature (aside from her still remaining afloat) is that
her planking runs laterally as opposed to lengthwise.
Alma was built in 1891 by Fred Siemer, a German immigrant who constructed the
vessel in his own Hunter's Point yard. Siemer, like most scow craftsmen, operated with-
out plans, giving each scow its individual quality. Alma was no exception. Named for his
granddaughter, it was operated by Siemer's son-in-law, James Peterson. Himself an immi-
grant (from Sweden), Peterson operated a fleet of a half-dozen scows, eventually growing
to represent one of San Francisco's largest and most important such operations.
Alma, like most scows, carried two masts and a small crew consisting of two or
three persons. The deckhands were noted for their strength and toughness: competition
for dock space and questions over rights-of-way often degenerated into fisticuffs. Even
when peaceable, the business was difficult. Operating from spring through fall, the craft
plied streams and shallow waterways with tremendous loads of hay, sometimes resort-
ing to poling, kedging, or even rowing the craft upstream. In times of high wind, they
often ran afoul of skippers piloting larger craft, as the 1909 collision of Alma with the
Alaska Packers Association vessel Kvichak attests. By 1918, Alma had been demasted and
converted into a salt-carrying barge; within a decade, she had been converted once again
to an oyster shell dredger, hauling over 100 tons of this commodity per week to Petaluma
poultry farms, where it was ground up and added to chicken feed.
The use of motor scows, which first appeared on the Bay in 1906, made such inci-
dents as the Kvichak collision less common. By 1925, only four sailing scows remained
in active service on the Bay. Alma herself took on an engine just two years later. These
early gasoline engines produced no more than 50 horsepower; during her last upgrade in
1951, Alma was outfitted with a pair of diesel engines capable of generating 220 horse-
power. Even with these advancements, scows were soon to be replaced. The internal
combustion engine, bridge and highway construction, and other variables saw them lose
their cargoes to trucks by the middle of the twentieth century. Alma hung on, delivering
oyster shells to Petaluma chicken farms, and serving as a shell dredger until 1957, the last
of a ubiquitous if unromantic fleet.
Today, Alma sails routinely from San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park's
Hyde Street Pier on a fixed schedule, educating tourists and school groups about the
maritime heritage and history of San Francisco Bay. She is a National Historic Landmark,
having achieved that status in 1988.
Of course, these rewards came with some costs, too. Since the crews did the loading
and unloading in addition to sailing the craft, there was comparatively more work — some-
times three or four times as much as on a deepwater vessel. The work could be difficult, as
in shallow waters, where the crew poled the craft upriver, or ran a line to a tree and winched
up to it. At times the pace was agonizingly slow, but there were also spans of frenetic activ-
ity: loading a thousand bales of hay in an afternoon, piled so high that the crafts eventually
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adopted raised pulpits so that the helmsman would have an unimpeded view of the bay,
was a case in point. The daily hazards of groundings, as the schooners beat to windward
up narrow channels, in fickle winter breezes, and frequent fights over rights-of-way (with
inevitable collisions) made the job nothing if not nerve-wracking.
Such hazards were not, of course, limited to scow schooners, and plagued all vessels
engaged in inland traffic. In 1860, the side-wheeler Sacramento approached Steamboat
Slough, a narrow tributary of the Delta. Antelope, another side-wheeler, piloted by Captain
Enos Fouratt, tried to pass, but was unable to do so. It seems Sacramento took issue with
the bold move of its smaller competitor and forced her aground, leaving her stranded on
the mud flats as she herself steamed toward Rio Vista. Fouratt made the necessary adjust-
ments to his vessel, freed her from the extrication, and steamed off in search of revenge.
Finding Sacramento just past Rio Vosta, Fouratt rammed his bow into the offending vessel's
starboard quarter. Sacramento retaliated by reversing its engines, causing her to lay across
Antelope's bow, pushing her sideways at full speed several miles downriver. Tempers cooled,
and Fouratt — arrested in San Francisco the next day — described the event as merely caus-
ing "some slight delay and expense." 4
In addition to the veritable flotilla of steamboats and scow schooners that scurried
across the waters of the bay and delta, there was an armada of workboats that constituted a
significant percentage of all inland shipping in the state. 5 The aforementioned scows were
the most ubiquitous craft, but they were joined by any number of commercial sloops and
schooners. These were primarily round-bottomed centerboard vessels with a shallow draft
and wide beam. Fast enough to sail against tidal currents, they ran more or less on schedule,
a feat not within grasp of the scows. The earliest were plunger (or cat) rigged, but by the
1880s, almost all could be classified as sloops. These hardy craft were used for everything
from oyster transports and as tenders to the river salmon fishery to hauling diverse freight
such as potatoes (indeed, they were sometimes referred to as "potato boats") and fresh
produce. By the mid-1880s, some were equipped with primitive gas engines, which allowed
six knots in calm waters, and a number were engaged in bringing passengers to various Bay
attractions on pleasurable day cruises. Trips to the Farallones to hunt sea lions or to isolated
picnic grounds were common; regrettably, accidents and fatalities were not uncommon. 6
The first San Francisco Bay built tugs included Merrimac (built at Eden Landing in
Alameda County in 1861), Rescue (built in San Francisco in 1863), and Water Witch (a forty-
ton craft commissioned in 1866 for Goodall and Perkins). Meeting sailing ships outside the
heads as well as towing them to sea was a major waterfront business in San Francisco for
much of its maritime history. Rather than bringing order to the intense and often violent
competition that marked the Whitehall boatmen, tug operations merely escalated it, since
the expense of owning and operating such craft made securing business more important
than ever.
See Andrew Cohen, Gateway to the Inland Coast: The Story of the Carquinez Strait (Sacramento:
California State Lands Commission, 1996).
For patterns of bay and river transportation development, see Joseph A. McGowan, History of the
Sacramento Valley (New York: Lewis, 1961). See also Thor Severson, Sacramento 1839 to 1874: An
Illustrated History from Sutter's Fort to Capital City (n.p.: California Historical Society, 1973).
Stephen Canright, "Commercial Sloop List, Release 14," August 26, 2009, SFMNHP; and J. A. McGowen,
"San Francisco-Sacramento Shipping, 1839-1854" (master's thesis, University of California at Berkeley), 1939.
137
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
Tug operations on the Bay were monopolized throughout much of its history. The
Goodall and Perkins operation, headed by Captain Millen Griffith, controlled the business
until 1883, when the Red Stack/Merchants and Shipowners Tug Company was established
to contest the monopoly. The Black Stack/Spreckels Tug Company was established shortly
thereafter, and for some years, there was competition between the three. By World War I,
Red Stack had risen to prominence, buying out its competitors. Purchased by Tom Crowley
in 1918, that company enjoyed an unprecedented — and unbreakable — monopoly on tug
service well into the 1970s.
While sloops and scow schooners were needed to transport hay, bricks, coal, produce,
and other bulk commodities throughout the greater San Francisco Bay region, ferries were
required to bring people from one part of the Bay to another. 7 There are, in effect, two separate
and distinct stages that mark the development of ferry service on the Bay. One purpose was
for local excursions. During this stage, the distinction between regularly scheduled service
and irregular excursions were often, indeed usually, blurred. The second iteration was with
ferries as part of a formal travel and transportation system (the major ferries were those that
were connected with a railroad; in 1930, at the peak of Bay ferry service, the Southern Pacific
Railroad with forty-three ferries, owned the largest ferry fleet in the world. Some of these had
room for nearly 2,000 passengers). This stage of ferry evolution was as a commuter vehicle.
The earliest manifestation of ferry service was seen in the operations of the steamer
Kangaroo.^ Established in 1850 by Captain Thomas Gray, Kangaroo charged "excursion-
ists" a fixed rate ($1 per person, $3 per wagon or horse) to take "a trip across the bay for an
opportunity to visit the wondrously wooded region of Contra Costa": she was joined shortly
thereafter by the side-wheel steamer Hector. 9 Departing from San Antonio Creek on a
twice-weekly schedule, it was noted that the sailings were "subject to tide, sand bar, fog and
weather." 10 The following year, a ferry of unknown name began carrying Mare Island work-
ers across Mare Island Strait from Vallejo. 11
Apparently, the first regular commuter service was provided by the Charles Minturn's
Contra Costa Steam Navigation Service in 1853.Using the ferry Clinton, the operators had
three daily runs from San Francisco to Oakland, charging fifty cents per person (alterna-
tively, monthly commuters could purchase a pass for twenty dollars). By 1857, she was joined
in transbay service by the ferry Contra Costa, built in San Francisco by John G. North.
7 An 1876 inventory counted 462 two-masted, and 11 three-masted schooners owned and operated in San
Francisco alone. Certified List of Vessels and their Tonnage Registered at the San Francisco Custom House
(San Francisco: Towne and Bacon, 1876).
8 The standard treatment on this topic remains George Harlan, San Francisco Bay Ferryboats (San
Francisco; Howell-North Books, 1967). A nice pictorial history can be found in Paul C. Trimble, Ferries of
San Francisco Bay (San Francisco: Arcadia Books, 2007).
9 For a firsthand description of ferry construction and operation, see Samuel Ward, Sam Ward in the Gold
Rush, ed. Carvel Collins (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1949).
10 Trimble, Ferries of San Francisco Bay, 18.
11 By 1909, the Vallejo-Mare Island route was controlled by the Vallejo Ferry Company. Enjoying a monopoly,
it began to charge exorbitant rates to bring shipyard workers across the narrow channel. Intrepid ship-
wrights pooled their resources and acquired a small boat. To evade the legally binding monopoly, the work-
ers formed the Solano Aquatic Club, with the stated intent of promoting yachting, sailing, rowing, and hunt-
ing. The real intent was to undermine the monopoly. By 1912, the club had its own weekly newsletter — the
Mare Island Tribune — and used advertising revenue to purchase additional boats, all of which were filled to
capacity with members en route to their shipyard jobs or heading home at the conclusion of their shift. The
route eventually became known as the Six Minute Ferry Company, until it was brought out in 1922.
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Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
Unfortunately for Minturn, a competitor soon appeared in the form of James LaRue's San
Antonio Steam Navigation Company. Operating a pair of vessels at rates half that charged by
Minturn, the newcomer had quite an advantage, made more obvious following a disastrous
race in 1859, when Minturn's Contra Costa suffered an explosion, with the loss of six lives,
in a climactic battle against LaRue's Oakland. The two services eventually overcame their
hostility and merged soon thereafter. To accommodate the increase in transbay ferry traffic,
the Davis Street Wharf was replaced as the San Francisco terminus, slips were built by the
Board of State Harbor Commissioners at the foot of Market Street in 1875, and the Central
Pacific Railroad constructed an adjacent passenger station. 12 Predecessor to the Southern
Pacific, the Central Pacific facilities allowed for railcars coming from Oakland (and the
transcontinental railroad terminus there) to be transferred across the Bay to San Francisco
for processing. Before long, that company enjoyed a monopoly and exerted tremendous
influence over local and state politics.
Such improvements were not unique to San Francisco. The Oakland Long Wharf,
completed in 1871, extended almost two miles into the bay, nearly reaching Yerba
Buena Island, and served deepwater and coastwise vessels until 1918. Originally
designed as a connection line to the Transcontinental Terminal, it served both passen-
gers and freight until 1882, at which point the former were directed to the larger
Oakland Pier Terminal. 13
Passenger service was not limited to transbay operations. Irregularly scheduled
services shuttled Argonauts from San Francisco to the Sierra goldfields, and by 1866, Capital
linked San Francisco and Sacramento, and a double-ended ferry, Alameda, introduced a
concept that would be the standard in the Bay for years to come. 14 A similar service, estab-
lished in 1868 by real-estate promoters based in Sausalito, linked the city to the North Bay;
here, passengers aboard Princess could enjoy a leisurely sail from Meiggs Wharf, near the
foot of Powell Street, to Marin County. A third line, provided weekend service for East Bay
residents heading to resorts along the Russian River. This operation began in 1915 with Ellen
and continued uninterrupted until the line was superseded by the Richmond-San Rafael
Bridge in 1956. 15 Taking their cues from the highly successful ferry system perfected in New
York Harbor, these lines maintained a fleet of double-ended vessels that were powered by
walking-beam engines.
12 This Ferry House, immediate predecessor to the current Ferry Building, stood specifically at the foot of
Market Street so that ferry passengers could transfer conveniently to horsecar lines that funneled to that
point via the city's main artery.
13 At the same time, the Central Pacific was acquiring every available bayside plot in Oakland. Only the
activities of Horace W. Carpentier, who secured exclusive rights to an area of the waterfront for $5, 2
percent of all wharfage fees, the construction of three wharves, and the building of a public school —
prevented them for acquiring total control. Woodruff Minor, Pacific Gateway: An Illustrated History of
the Port of Oakland (Oakland: Port of Oakland, 2000). The Central Pacific and its successor, Southern
Pacific, had a major presence along the waterfront south of Market Street, purchasing Tichenor's Ways
(at Second Street) and acquiring the Pacific Mail Steamship Company facilities at the foot of First
Street. They also enjoyed the only unbroken rail connection between the city and the transcontinental
railroad, running trains through the peninsula, forcing their competitors to rely on connecting ferries
that linked the city to the East Bay.
14 Many observers posit that San Francisco developed as a port largely through its role as a transfer point
between the river trade and the deepwater and coastal traffic. Mel Scott, The San Francisco Bay Area: A
Metropolis in Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
15 The 135-foot Ellen had been built in 1883 and was long used on the Vallejo-Mare Island run.
139
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
The two largest commuter ferry operators in San Francisco were the Key Route
System and Golden Gate Ferries, a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Railroad designed
to carry autos on three routes (from San Francisco to the North Bay, Berkeley, and
Oakland, respectively). 16 Both benefited from the tragedy of the 1906 earthquake. Many
who worked in the city were forced by circumstance (or chose) to find housing elsewhere
and the population of the Bay Area was significantly redistributed. Populations spread
and communities in the East and North Bay grew tremendously: Oakland saw its popula-
tion double, and nearby Berkeley tripled in size. Ferries, as a result, became important
commuter vehicles. The iconic San Francisco Ferry Building, opened in 1898, handled
over ten million passengers annually by 1930, making it the second-busiest terminal in the
world, trailing only London's Charing Cross Station. 17 One hundred seventy ferries called
at or departed from San Francisco each day during the Roaring Twenties, as approxi-
mately fifty million passengers utilized the system in any given year. The Key System,
with its fleet of dark orange ferries operated interurban service between San Francisco
and East Bay communities from 1903 until January 14, 1937, when the Bay Bridge opened.
Beginning in 1939, Key Route light-rail trains rumbled across the lower deck of the span,
a link that remained unbroken until the early 1950s. This corporation made tremendous
jumps in marine engineering, building a series of propeller-driven and turbo-electric
(from 1923) craft that ran from San Francisco to the Oakland Mole, a shallow-water
harbor located where the Bay Bridge today enters Oakland. 18
During the 1920s, ferries met increasing demands for the transportation of auto-
mobiles. The construction of boats designed solely for transporting motor vehicles, and
the establishment of landings where they could be handled efficiently, were characteris-
tics of this period. Beginning in 1922 with the diesel-electric Golden Gate and running
auto ferries until it was absorbed by the Southern Pacific, Golden Gate Ferries enjoyed
phenomenal growth, increasing profits at the rate of 26 percent per year. Inevitably, with
the opening of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, these lines — as well as a pair of compet-
ing auto ferries that likewise crossed the Carquinez Strait, until they too, were super-
seded by bridges — were made obsolete, with their assets dispersed to ports as far-flung as
Seattle and Montevideo.
16 Golden Gate Ferries was established as an auto ferry from Hyde Street Pier in 1922. Initially indepen-
dent, it was purchased by Southern Pacific in 1926.
17 Labeled "the front door of San Francisco," the building was designed by the illustrious architectural
firm of McKim, Mead, and White, and its Roman Revival form represented a stylish anomaly along the
utilitarian and billboard-strewn waterfront of the city. San Francisco Chronicle, January 18, 1914. On the
ferry building itself, see Nancy Olmstead, The Ferry Building: Witness to a Century of Change (Berkeley:
Heyday Books, 1998).
18 Among the most important minds behind the development of the Key Route system was Borax Smith, of
"twenty-mule team" fame. On the Key Route system, consult Walter Rice and Emiliano Echeverria, The Key
System: San Francisco and the Eastshore Empire (San Francisco: Arcadia Books, 2007). See also Harre W.
Demoro, The Key Route: Transbay Commuting by Train and Ferry (Glendale, CA: Interurban Press, 1985).
140
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
Eureka
Among the best-preserved examples of Bay Area ferryboats is Eureka, currently
housed at the Hyde Street Pier. Built in Tiburon in 1890 for the San Francisco and
North Pacific Railroad Company (founded by Peter Donohue in 1869), the craft origi-
nally bore the name Ukiah, a nod to the Northern California city recently added as a
stop by the controlling railroad.
A magnificent side-paddle wheel ferry, Ukiah shuttled railcars from the city to
Tiburon. A lower deck accommodated railcars, while the upper promenade offered
breathtaking vistas for commuters. Double-ended so that no time would be wasted
in turning around prior to docking, she was designed for speed. A massive walking-
beam engine produced by San Francisco's Fulton Iron Works propelled the twin-
decked, three-hundred-foot ship across the Golden Gate. At more than forty-feet
tall, and nearly six feet across, the huge engine twelve-foot stroke drove the twenty-
seven-foot wide paddlewheel to the delight of passengers who watched the opera-
tion from behind safety glass. In the wake of the great earthquake of 1906, the
vessel saw major changes in its ownership as its controlling interest was absorbed
by the Northwestern Pacific Railway, itself jointly owned by the Southern Pacific and
Santa Fe Railroads.
After three decades service, she was overhauled in 1920. Featuring a new
superstructure, she was transformed into a passenger-auto ferry and renamed
Eureka, the new northern terminus of the controlling railroad. In this inception, she
could accommodate 2,300 passengers and over 100 automobiles. She was consid-
ered both the largest and fastest ferryboat in the world at this time. After 1929, the
vessel was maintained solely by the Southern Pacific, which incorporated the ferry as
part of the world's largest fleet, with some forty-two craft that delivered passengers
to destinations around the Bay. Within a decade, Eureka and her counterparts trans-
ported some forty million passengers and six million vehicles each year. Renowned
for her speed, she was reputed to transit the run from Sausalito the San Francisco
Ferry Building in under twenty-eight minutes. Passengers could enjoy loitering near
the on-board newsstands, grab a hearty meal at the sit-down restaurant, or play
cards in the spacious lounge. The opening of the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges
caused serious reductions in ferry operation, and Eureka made the last Sausalito
run in 1941 The Southern Pacific maintained a small fleet of boats that brought San
Francisco passengers to East Bay destinations to connect with long-distance rail
service, but few, if any commuters used this service. Eureka remained in this employ
until February 10, 1957, when she broke a crankshaft en route to the city from
Oakland. The last commuter ferry operated for an additional year before it, too, fell
silent due to the drop in demand.
The San Francisco Maritime State Historical Park acquired Eureka so as to
share her with subsequent generations. The last remaining wooden-hulled ferry-
boat in the United States, Eureka possesses the last walking-beam engine on any
ship afloat, and she was designated a National Historic Landmark and in 1993-
1994, underwent a $3,4-million restoration enabling her to receive countless visi-
tors in the following years.
141
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
The bridges essentially ended the first era of bay ferries by the end of the 1930s,
though the last day is usually taken as July 29, 1958 (the last transbay ferry crossing). On
that day, San Leandro departed San Francisco for the Oakland Mole to rendezvous with a
transcontinental railroad line. 19 The second stage of ferry-as-commuter-vehicle began in
the 1970s, initiated by a classical historical evolution: the ferries brought traffic to make the
bridges feasible, until traffic overran the bridges, making ferries viable again. Before analyz-
ing that stage in ferry history, we look first at an iteration of Bay Area ferry service.
More ferry routes were established by railroads than other connections, and the
most important of the ferry routes — whether established by railroads or not — were
those connected with a rail line. By the 1870s, most of the Bay ferries in operation were
owned by the railroads, serving as maritime continuations of those systems. By 1930, the
Southern Pacific Railroad, which began ferry service on February 17, 1885 with ten vessels
named for various Indian tribes, claimed the world's largest ferry fleet with a stagger-
ing forty-three vessels. 20 Their annual traffic included forty million passengers and sixty
million automobiles.
Ferryboat Contra Costa
While railroads began delivering more cargo and passengers once carried by ships, they
still encountered unsolvable problems. Among the most notable were the deepwa-
ter straits separating the city of San Francisco from the rich agricultural regions of the
Central Valley. To deal with this challenge, railroads constructed huge ferries to transport
entire trains across the Carquinez Strait. The railroad ferries Solano and Contra Costa
were the largest such vessels ever constructed.
The Central Pacific operated a small fleet of a half-dozen vessels, ranging from
the passenger ferry El Capitan to the enormous railroad ferry Solano. When the
Central Pacific was acquired by the Southern Pacific in 1885, that entity continued
the boatbuilding operations. Among the vessels built by the Southern Pacific was the
Contra Costa, the world's largest double-ended, steam-driven, paddlewheel train-car
ferry in the world.
Contra Costa was launched on May 16, 1914. Extremely light-drafted, she was
over 433 feet long and 116 feet wide. Constructed from two million board feet of
Douglas fir at a cost of around $400,000, she required over one hundred tons of galva-
nized iron fastenings and some 1 6,000 nails. The ferry was equipped with four sets of
railroad tracks on its main deck, and could accommodate up to thirty-six freight cars (or
two dozen passenger cars) and two locomotives. There were four rudders on each end
of Contra Costa to assist with steering in the narrow confines of the Carquinez Strait;
hydraulic power assisted with the steering engines and operated the hinged aprons that
allowed for the loading and unloading of the trains. Eight massive boilers, running elev-
en by thirteen feet, supplied motive power to a pair of twenty-eight-foot paddlewheels,
19 Harlan, San Francisco Bay Ferryboats, 120-21.
20 In 1921, the Southern Pacific ferried some 27 million passengers over the bay. See David F. Myrick,
Southern Pacific Water Lines: Marine, Bay, and River Operations of the Southern Pacific System (Pasadena:
Southern Pacific Historical and Technical Society, 2007). By contrast, the Key Route system could claim
but 15 million, and the Northwestern Pacific, a rival railroad that ran ferries across the Golden Gate,
just 7 million. On the last, see Fred A. Stindt, The Northwestern Pacific Railroad: Redwood Empire Route
(Kelseyville, CA: Fred Stindt Publishing, 1964).
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Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
which could be worked independently. A pair of 7,800-gallon fuel tanks complemented
four freshwater tanks of the same size.
Above deck, Contra Costa provided opulent comforts. Telephones were found
throughout the galley, saloon, and restaurant, and the entire vessel was illuminated by
modern electric lights. The mile-wide straits were crossed in style and quickly, averag-
ing but eight minutes, allowing for hourly trips from Solano to Contra Costa Counties.
Contra Costa operated between Port Costa and Benicia for more than a decade and a
half. Upon completion of a railroad bridge across the straits in 1929, the ferry was no
longer needed. Abandoned the following year, her remains can be seen at low tide in
the waters of Morrow Cove, now home to the California Maritime Academy.
The first ferry to connect with a railroad was Contra Costa, launched on September
2, 1863 as the centerpiece of the San Francisco and Oakland Railroad Line. The next year
saw an additional line, the former riverboat Sophie Maclane, placed by the San Francisco
and Alameda Railroad Company. Ferries began serving North Bay rail connections with
the Petaluma and Haystack railroad in that same year (1864). Subsequent ferry service oper-
ated by the San Francisco & North Pacific Railroad and Petaluma & Santa Rosa Railroad
connected Petaluma River landing locations (and later Tiburon) with the city, while North
Pacific Coast Railroad ferries linked Sausalito with San Francisco (operating under the
Northwestern Pacific Railroad from 1907) until the Golden Gate Bridge opened. 21
On September 6, 1869, Sophie Maclane, now operated by the Central Pacific Railroad,
made history by becoming the first ferry to meet a transcontinental train, doing so at the
Alameda Wharf. The Central Pacific was the largest operator of ferries, with more routes,
passengers, and steamers than any rival. That entity and its successor, the Southern Pacific,
maintained a pair of railroad ferries (Solano and Contra Costa) that transferred entire trains
across the Carquinez Straits and which established records as the world's largest ferry-
boats. 22 At 424 feet, and a breadth of 116 feet, Solano carried as many as four dozen railcars
and a locomotive. Built in 1878, she was surpassed only by Contra Costa, built in 1914, and
both vessels remained in service until 1930, when a railroad bridge linking Martinez and
Benicia made crossing the Carquinez Straits easier.
Another passenger line ran from the city to Vallejo, connecting with the San
Francisco, Napa, and Calistoga Railway. The Monticello Steamship Company, named in
honor of the first vessel of the fleet, began operations in 1895 and ran until 1937.lt used
single-enders of a design much like the Long Island and Chesapeake Bay packets, and in
fact, after the opening of the Panama Canal, the company acquired a few such steamers
from Eastern waters. Of course, ferries were not immune to accidents. One of the more
spectacular occurred on February 27, 1888, whenjulia, a passenger ferry employed on the
21 Likewise, both the Santa Fe and Western Pacific Railroads established a presence in the city, construct-
ing car ferry terminals to connect the city to feeder lines in outlying areas, allowing the means for San
Francisco-based businesses to extend their reach far beyond the geographical confines of the port.
22 "World's Largest Steam Ferry," International Marine Engineering (November 1914): 8. See also "New
Ferries Under Way for Southern Pacific Company," Pacific Marine Review (November 1914): 69;
"Southern Pacific Yard Busy," Pacific Marine Review (November 1914): 247; and Edward W. Olin, "Side
Wheel Car Ferry Contra Costa," International Marine Engineering (September 1915): 387-94.
143
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
Carquinez Straits, exploded prior to its inaugural run. More than thirty persons perished
in a dramatic scene heard for miles around. Julia was one of the first on the Bay to burn oil
rather than coal, and the inexperience of her crew in the new system was widely blamed for
the catastrophe.
The coming of the automobile not only spurred changes in ferryboat service and
operation but also signaled the end of that system. The opening of the Golden Gate and Bay
Bridges in the late 1930s severely curtailed ferry business; the Southern Pacific, for example,
reduced their fleet to a half dozen in 1951. Between 1945 and 1957, approximately two
hundred miles of freeway were built in the greater Bay Area, with another hundred planned
or already under construction. While the creation of the bridges and freeways might have
signaled the death knell for commuter and passenger ferries, this was but a momentary
lapse. The Golden Gate Bridge District kicked off the modern revival of passenger ferries
in the Bay: Harlan Soeten, then curator of the Maritime Museum, spearheaded the effort to
establish this service, and was its first operations manager. In due time, the traffic conges-
tion spurred new lines, and Bay Area ferries were resurrected in the guise of the Red and
White and Blue and Gold fleets (named, respectively, for Stanford and UC Berkeley, the
alma maters of their founders). 23
While the aforementioned ferry service operated exclusively within the confines
of the Bay, there were similar riverboat operations bringing goods and passengers from
the city to the delta and vice versa. Sailing vessels found it difficult to navigate the twist-
ing waterways of the delta. Winds (or lack thereof), tides, currents, and shifting sandbars
required skippers to employ alternative methods of moving upriver. Winching, towing, or
otherwise working their way upriver was laborious and time-consuming. Scow schooners
were reliable, but could be agonizingly slow. Steamboats would provide a better way 24
River traffic was primarily destined for Sacramento, which served as the jumping-
off point for the Argonauts en route to the diggings. That community had been settled by
John Sutter in 1839, when the intrepid Swiss immigrant brought the twenty-ton vessels
Isabel and Nicholas, two small craft that he had purchased after arriving in San Francisco
on Clementine, upstream to a point at the nexus of the American and Sacramento Rivers. 25
There he established a lumber mill, around which grew a small community: it was incorpo-
rated as a town in 1848 and as a city in 1863. During the gold rush, it flourished as a trans-
port station, with miners disembarking from Bay Area craft to make their way to the Sierra
goldfields. One contemporary described it: "I never saw a more beautiful stream. In the
rainy season, and in the spring, when the snows on the mountains are melting, it overflows
its banks in many places It abounds in fish, the most valuable of which is the salmon, the
largest and fattest I have ever seen I have seen salmon taken from the Sacramento that
are five feet in length, all of its tributaries are equally rich in the finny tribe American
enterprise will soon develop the wealth contained in these streams, which hitherto have
23 Blue and Gold was founded in 1978 by Roger Murphy, scion of a San Francisco family that had previously oper-
ated tugboat service on the bay. Red and White was founded by Tom Crowley, as an extension of the excursion
boats used during the 1915 Panama Pacific Expedition, and carried on by his son, Thomas B. Crowley.
24 The river runs were not limited to such small craft. In spring 1849, two large oceangoing ships, Joven
Guipuscoana (owned by Sam Brannan) and Eliodora (owned by Hensley and Reading) arrived in Sacramento.
25 Nicholas was reputed to be the pleasure craft of the king of Hawaii. Sutter relied on the navigational
talents of eighteen-year-old William Heath Davis to lead the small flotilla. See Cortland Parker, Up-Delta
in the Early Days: A Cruise into the Past of the California Delta (Benicia, CA; Gallagher Publishing, 2000).
144
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
been entirely neglected" 26 In subsequent years, it remained an important shipping point for
agricultural products: fruit, wine, grapes, cotton, and vegetables abounded here and many
new industries sprouted up around the turn of the twentieth century, including canneries,
food processing, farm machinery, and of course assorted facets of maritime and maritime
shipping. Sloops, schooners, brigs, and even ships navigated the rivers as far as Sacramento
and Stockton, but this was difficult for sailing vessels, and steamers quickly took over. After
the first years of the gold rush, increased ship size coupled with rapidly silting rivers from
hydraulic mining closed the inland ports to most oceangoing vessels, though palatial side-
wheelers continued making the trek. 27
The wealth of the interior soon gravitated toward San Francisco. A quartet of piers
(1, 1 Yi , 3, and 5) opened just north of that city's ferry building in 1918 to handle inland
trade and transport. To alleviate bottlenecks and congestion caused by the runoff from
hydraulic mining operations, the river channel was dredged and widened in 1911, connect-
ing Sacramento's harbor to San Francisco Bay via a deepwater ship channel. These improve-
ments facilitated the growth of communities in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys and
fostered California's agricultural business, making the state the richest in the nation. In later
years, the famous Delta King and Delta Queen, featuring 2,000-horsepower engines with ten-
foot strokes, provided overnight connections between San Francisco and Sacramento from
Pier 1 Vi , making it an important gateway for public travel to the state's interior. 28
The first generation of riverboats seen on Western waters was, by and large, made up
of Eastern vessels that had come around the Cape, disassembled as cargo in sailing ships.
The first of these so-called "knockdown steamers," Sitka, was brought to the Bay Area
in pieces aboard the Russian bark Naslednich in 1847. 29 At 37 feet long, with a beam of 9
feet and a draft of 3 feet, the side-wheeler was well suited to delta operations. Consigned
to William A. Leidesdorff and immediately put into service, she suffered an ignomini-
ous debut. 30 Launched on November 29, 1847, she headed for Sacramento, reaching New
Helvetia in six days and seven hours. 31 (By comparison, just three years later, the bark
Whiton, at 241 tons, finished a 140-day sail from New York by navigating upriver from San
Francisco to Sacramento in seventy-two hours). On her downriver trip, she was beaten to
26 Edwin Bryant, What I Saw in California (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1849).
27 Stockton, located about 70 miles from the Golden Gate, was eventually opened to oceangoing steam-
ers thanks to Congressional appropriations that successfully deepened the ship channel. George P.
Hammond, The Weber Era in Stockton History (Berkeley: Friends of the Bancroft Library, 1982).
28 The vessels, launched at Stockton in 1927, featured 250-foot hulls and stern-wheel overhangs that
brought the total length to 285 feet. Stan Garvey, King and Queen of the River: The Legendary Paddle
Wheel Steamboats Delta King and Delta Queen (Menlo Park, CA: River Heritage Press, 1995).
29 Jerry MacMullen, Paddlewheel Days in California (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1944),
remains the standard text on this subject. A nicely illustrated compendium is Paul C. Trimble, River
Boats of Northern California (Charleston: Acadia Books, 2011).
30 Leidesdorff, a native of the Virgin Islands, was the son of a black woman and a Dutch sailing master. He
immigrated to New Orleans, where he became wealthy in the cotton trade. Moving to San Francisco in
1841, he built the first hotel in the city and operated a large warehouse on Yerba Buena cove. The first
treasurer of San Francisco, he also served on the inaugural school board and held a position as vice-
consul of the United States.
31 That same month saw the inaugural run of Stockton, bringing passengers between Sonoma and San
Francisco. George and Roger Emanuels, Schools and Scows in Early California (Sonoma, CA: Sonoma
County Historical Society, 1998), 61.
145
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
Benicia by at least four days by an ox cart. 32 This inauspicious start did not bode well for her
future. On February 12, 1848, Sitka was sunk after running aground. Subsequently raised,
her engine was used for a factory ashore, and her hull was re-rigged as a schooner named
Rainbow. 33 Despite these initial failures, steamboat operations on the inland rivers contin-
ued undeterred.
Following Sitka, Lady Washington was assembled at Sutter's Sacramento
Embarcadero, heading into the Bay on August 9, 1849.She went up the Sacramento and
American Rivers as far as Coloma, then started back. Like her predecessor, she struck a
snag and went to the bottom; she, too, was raised and steamed again as Ohio. A similar
fate awaited Edward Everett Junior (transported to California via the sailing ship Edward
Everett), a 50 -foot stern-wheeler that snagged on the American River and sank in 1849;
Plumas, a 51-ton stern-wheeler victimized by Sacramento River snags in 1854; and Pioneer, a
Benicia-assembled side-wheeler that snagged and sank on the Feather River in 1849.
In addition to these dangers, the unique situation of frontier California presented
several needs. The first need was the creation of a local shipyard to assemble and outfit the
steamers, sent in parts, via sailing ship. Lieutenant James Blair, USN, an associate of William
Aspinwall of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company (and pilot of Senator on that vessel's first
trip upriver), organized and built the Sutter Iron Works on Rincon Point to assemble engines
and steamboats sent from the East Coast on sailing ships. Staffed by the best shipwrights and
engineers from Philadelphia, Blair headed the firm until his death in 1853.
Numerous early steamer disasters demonstrated the need for shallow-draft vessels
capable of navigating the perilously shallow waters of the delta. "Trading" boats (or
"mosquito" boats) provided a solution, transporting cargo from ports like Rio Vista as far
as two-hundred miles inland. They were reputed to steam wherever the ground was wet,
bringing agricultural products back to the greater Bay Area on their return trips. This
smaller class of "skimmer steamer" served around sixty landings between Rio Vista and
Clarksburg, since virtually every ranch or farm had a landing, often devoid of wharves or
similar conveniences. Chaotic competition marked the business, though there were some
small regional monopolies. 34 Larger vessels tended to end their runs from San Francisco in
Sacramento, transferring their passengers and cargo to smaller steamers at that port.
In 1875, the California Transportation Company (CTC) was formed to control this
business, profitably operating a small fleet of shallow-draft stern-wheelers until the auto-
mobile made water transportation too costly 35 To keep their extensive river fleet in repair,
32 California Star, December 18, 1847. A more gentle interpretation stated that "it would detract from her
fame to place on record the time of her first trip." John H. Brown, Reminiscences and Incidents of the Early
Days of San Francisco (San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1933), 116.
33 John Kemble, doyen of West Coast maritime historians noted that the Rainbow "was one of those 'morn-
ing illuminations' of which sailors take warning It had not bright promise to be fulfilled It was the
shell of the grub from which the butterfly had departed." John Haskell Kemble, "The First Steam Vessel
to Navigate San Francisco Bay," California Historical Quarterly 14, no. 2 (June 1935): 143-46.
34 One such fleet was managed by the Mokelumne River Steam Navigation Company, which operated the ships
Mary Ellen and OK to Woodbridge and beyond. An evocative, firsthand account of the river landings can be
found in John Leale, Recollections of a Tule Sailor by a Master Mariner (San Francisco: George Fields, 1939).
35 Illustrative of the fleet was the 110-foot Fanny Ann. See also Clifford C. Weidemann, "Memoir of a Young
Sternwheeler Pilot on the Sacramento," Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 33, no. 4
(1997): 20-27.
146
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
the CTC operated a yard at Stockton Channel. 36 That port served as a central hub, first for
wagon trains, and later for railroads. It was stated that no Pacific coast port had better rail
connection than Stockton: the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, and Western Pacific all made
direct connections to the city, and the Northern Pacific tied in nearby. In addition, several
shorter regional and branch lines crisscrossed the region, allowing a fledgling intermodal
connection at the port. 37
Unlike Sitka and Lady Washington, the New Brunswick builders of 5. B. Wheeler (which
arrived via the bark Fanny) specifically designed her for the California trade. The 120-ton
stern-wheeler arrived almost fully built to Benicia: Fanny had no deck, and S. B. Wheeler was
devoid of her upper works, allowing her to nestle into the hull of the bark. The then-stern-
wheeler's engine and upperworks were stowed, the bark was decked and masted, and upon
arrival, the process was reversed: the decks of the bark were removed, she was sunk, the
steamer floated, and the bark raised. While Fanny returned to sea, 5. B. Wheeler operated on
the San Francisco to Stockton route for years, until she was sold to a Mexican firm. 38
Arriving via the Straits of Magellan, eastern steamboats made up the next iteration of
riverboats. Larger than their knockdown cousins, the first was McKim, a 200-horsepower
steamboat brought to San Francisco by the firm of Simmons, Hutchinson, and Company.
Built at an expense of $100,000 she cost another $30,000 to transport, but she ushered in a
period of "floating palaces." Entering service in 1849, she accommodated sixty passengers
paying $35.00 for an overnight cabin and an additional $1.50 for dinner. Others included
Wilson G. Hunt, a 450 -ton steamer built in 1849 for the excursion trade between New York
City and Coney Island. She came to California in 1850, enjoying great success in the river
trade between San Francisco and Sacramento until her sale in 1858. While McKim and
Wilson G. Hunt were designed primarily for passenger trade, others were pressed into
service for which they were ill prepared. Built by William H. Webb in New York in 1848,
Goliah was the second American vessel launched expressly as a tug. She came to California
in 1851, operating as a passenger steamer on the Sacramento River and along the coast,
undergoing modification, reconstruction, and enlargement in the process. By 1864, the
walking-beam side-wheeler returned to her intended service as a tugboat.
The most notable example of an East Coast vessel engaged in California riverboat
operations was New World. Built in New York, this magnificent 530-ton side-wheeler
featured plush red upholstery, marble-topped tables, and brass chandeliers. The extrava-
gance, however, bankrupted owner William H. Brown. Rather than a festive launching,
liens were nailed to the pilothouse door and deputy sheriffs made themselves at home on
"the best sofas in town" to prevent any sailing until Brown's debts were paid. But Brown
36 For a firsthand account of the trip to Stockton, see "The Great Yo-Semite Valley," Hutchings' California
Magazine 4 (October 1859), reprinted in Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity, ed. Roger Olmsted (Berkeley:
Howell North, 1962). A well-researched photographic essay of upriver boats, including construction
details, is Edward Galland Zelinsky and Nancy Leigh Olmsted, "Upriver Boats — When Red Bluff was the
Head of Navigation," California History 64 (Spring 1985): 86-117.
37 On the development of the port of Stockton, see Nicholas P. Hardemann, "Overland in Cargo Ships: The
Inland Seaport of Stockton, California," Journal of the West (July 1981): 75-85.
38 Other accounts of early trips upriver are in Elisha Oscar Crosby, Memoirs: Reminiscences of Calif ornia
and Guatemala, 1849-1865, ed. Charles Albro Barker (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1945);
Adolphus Windeler, California Gold Rush Diary of a German Sailor, ed. W. Turrentine Jackson (Berkeley:
Howell-North, 1969); and Bayard Taylor, El Dorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire (1850; reprint,
New York: Knopf, 1949).
147
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
persuaded the deputies to allow the launch to continue, and his captain, Ned Wakeman,
saw that steam was up in the boilers. As soon as the vessel took the water, Wakeman claimed
his all-embracing authority as master and headed for the open seas. Offshore, later in the
day, the deputies were lowered overboard in one of the steamer's boats and allowed to go
ashore. The irrepressible Wakeman then headed for Rio de Janeiro, where New World had
to stop for fuel. Knowing that he lacked the necessary legal documents to explain his pres-
ence, Wakeman threw himself overboard as the steamer approached the dock. He then
explained to the consul that he had fallen overboard, lost the documents, and was promptly
issued new ones. 39
At Panama, Wakeman knew two things: authorities were waiting for him, as well as
people willing to pay handsomely for passage to the goldfields of California. Wakeman
anchored New World behind an island, swam ashore, and informed the locals that his
vessel would come in the next morning. The law was cowed by the shouting mob, and New
World steamed for the Golden Gate with three hundred paying passengers. 40 Arriving in
Sacramento October 15, 1850, New World discharged its passengers, including one ravaged
with cholera. Over the next several weeks, it is said that four-fifths of the populace fled to
more salubrious climes, while another eight hundred succumbed to the illness.
Other famous vessels to arrive via the Straits of Magellan include the Boston-built,
750-ton Senator. Built for $150,000, Captain John Van Pelt brought her from San Francisco
to Sacramento in nine hours. In addition, the 202-foot side-wheeler Antelope served as the
Western terminus of the Pony Express, bringing mail from Sacramento to San Francisco at
the rate of $5 per ounce. 41 Senator, in particular, was notable. Prospectors paid anywhere
from $45 to $65 for passage upriver, allowing the vessel to gross as much as $50,000 per
trip — more than any steamboat in history. Following her November 5, 1849, inaugural
run, she made thrice-weekly sailings, arriving each time with 300 passengers and 300 tons
of freight. 42 Of Senator it was said that "more substantial, commodious, rapid, and well-
constructed steamers are not to be found on the waters of any other part of the globe." 43
The steamers, whether coming from the East Coast under their own power, as cargo
in larger vessels, or as locally built craft, successfully integrated into the region. They could
also be extremely profitable. By November 1849, John A. Sutter ran as far as Stockton, arriv-
ing on November 15, 1849, and clearing over $300,000 before being lost in a spectacular
1850 explosion. This type of event was not uncommon. Inefficient plants and inexperienced
crews often meant unmitigated disaster. On October 29, 1850, the 66-ton Sagamore blew up,
killing fifty passengers. Her engines were salvaged and installed in Secretary, which itself
exploded on April 15, 1854, killing sixteen. On October 18, 1853, a pair of explosions rocked
the San Francisco-Sacramento corridor. In the predawn hours, the iron side-wheeler
American Eagle (built on the East Coast in 1851) blew up, killing five. Just twelve hours later,
39 On Wakeman, see Gordon R. Newell, Paddlewheel Pirate: The Life and Adventures of Captain Ned
Wakeman (New York: Dutton, 1959).
40 As a riverboat, New WoWdwas virtually unsurpassed. On April 15, 1851, she completed the run from
San Francisco to Sacramento in an astonishing in five hours and thirty-five minutes, shaving some eight
hours off the usual fourteen-hour journey. In later years, New World joined Sacramento to form the basis
of a ferry system operated by the California Pacific Railroad Company.
41 Others that came via the straits included General Warren, California, Sarah, Hartford, and Governor Dana.
42 John Haskell Kemble, "The Senator" California Historical Quarterly 16 (1932): 61-70.
43 San Francisco Picayune, October 10, 1850.
148
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
the side-wheeler Stockton exploded, killing a pair of passengers and injuring eight others.
On April 11, 1853, Jenny A. Lind suffered thirty-one casualties when her boiler exploded
off San Francisquito Creek. The 73-ton/. A. McClelland blew up on August 25, 1861, kill-
ing fifteen, and the 93 -foot stern-wheeled Belle sank in shallow water just beyond the
Sacramento River's Horseshoe Bend on November 18, 1870.
Despite the dangers, the demand for speedy travel to the goldfields attracted passen-
gers and competition. Steamboat operators sensed an opportunity for large profit: the side-
wheelers William Robinson, El Dorado, and Mariposa soon moved into service, touching
off a price war. In December 1851, Erastus Corning charged but $1.50 for deck fare, and by
April the following year, no fewer than seven steamers traveled daily from San Francisco to
Sacramento. Greedy entrepreneurs flooded the market, with at times upward of fifty craft
crowding the narrow channels leading to Sacramento. Soon, cutthroat competition drove
these fares down to the ridiculously low rate of $1; freight rates, which had been $50 per ton,
fell soon thereafter to the same level. Competition threatened to ruin all players in the field,
until the California Steam Navigation Company formed in 1854. This conglomerate quickly
monopolized river traffic and brought some sense of order to a chaotic scene. From that point,
the conglomerate dominated traffic on the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, transporting
passengers in lavish comfort aboard fine steamboats built expressly for the trade. Chrysopolis,
a 245-foot side-wheeler with a capacity for 1,000 passengers built in San Francisco by John
North in 1860, was one of the finest and fastest steamers in the fleet, crediting with making
the run in five hours, nineteen minutes. 44 Nevada, Yosemite, Washoe, and Capital fleshed out
the fleet, docking at Rio Vista on their runs between San Francisco and Sacramento. 45 With
the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the venture began losing customers
and money, absorbed two years later by the Central Pacific Railroad. 46
In addition to increased competition on the San Francisco-Sacramento corridor,
service expanded to other towns, pushing farther and farther inland. By late 1849, Linda
inaugurated service to Marysville on the Feather River (it was en route to this destina-
tion that John A. Sutter had met its fate.) By April 1850, Aetna reached Norristown on the
American River, and the following month saw Jack Hays navigate as far as Redding on the
Sacramento River and Dolphin initiate service on the Napa River. At about the same time,
Georgiana left Stockton for Tuolumne City (on the Tuolumne River), the service she initi-
ated south of that locale eventually reaching Firebaugh's Ferry (on the San Joaquin River)
in Fresno County. All told, by the end of 1850, just a few years after Sitka's first forays into
the Delta, there were 28 steamboats on the Sacramento and Feather Rivers alone, though
the low water levels encountered in some sloughs required that paying passengers assist in
pushing the boats off mud banks. 47 (The last of the passenger stern-wheelers — steel-hulled
44 This equates to 19. 8 knots, or in excess of 22 miles per hour. John Haskell Kemble, "Chrysopolis: the
Queen of the Golden River," American Neptune 2 (October 1942): 299-306.
45 Nevada, entering service in 1861, was lost two years later when she hit a snag and sunk while racing the
speedy New World. The 580-ton side-wheeler Washoe was destroyed by fire in 1864 during a similar race.
Both Nevada and Washoe, incidentally, were captained by the same man, George Washington Kidd.
Yosemite endured an even worse fate. Departing Rio Vista on October 12, 1865, with 300 passengers and
50 Chinese laborers, the vessel exploded. One hundred fifty persons, including all the Chinese, perished.
46 Even with the advent of the railroad, riverboats continued to be economically important. Operating until
thel 930s, they shifted from fast side-wheelers to more sedate stern-wheelers, and changed their empha-
sis from passengers to freight (with some passenger accommodations).
47 Hutchings' California Magazine, January 1860.
149
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
night boats operated by the River Lines — departed from Stockton in 1940, shortly before
the routes were eclipsed by automobile traffic. 48 ) An additional 23 barks, 19 brigs, and 21
brigantines sailed to Sacramento from offshore routes.
This last statistic is telling. For all the impact that Bay and inland shipping had on the
economic integration of the region, it paled in comparison to that which was carried on
coastal vessels. Trade between American ports is the subject of the next chapter.
48 These were Delta King and Delta Queen. The shift from side-wheeler to stern-wheeler occurred in the
1870s, at which point the railroad had reached San Francisco Bay. From that point, there was no longer
a need for high speed in the river steamers, and thus the switch to cheaper, slower, and shallower-draft
stern-wheelers.
150
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
Launched in 1926, Delta Queen
transported 200 passengers in
luxury. "With hulls built in Scotland,
decks composed of Oregon timber,
a German-manufactured crank-
shaft, and San Francisco-produced
engine, she was truly representa-
tive of San Francisco's international
maritime heritage.
This photo by Harold McCurry
depicts the riverboat Fort Sutter at
her launching from the Schultze,
Robertson, and Schultze Shipyard,
near Hunter's Point in 1912.
Ferryboat Eureka at work in
San Francisco.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical
Park. P82-019a-1854pl.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical
Park. A4.20.378 pi.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical
Park. 90-006.5.
151
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
A map detailing the extensive water
transportation system available to
Bay Area residents.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical
Park. B10.18, 304pl.
Hay scow Annie L., built by Emil
Munder in 1900 isa classic example
of the once-ubiquitous form. At
60 tons and 65 feet, she carried
350 bales of hay and could sail
"anywhere that there was dew upon
the grass."
The ferry Yosemite at unidentified pier,
1867.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical
Park. A12. 5017 pi.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical
Park. A12. 28494 nl.
152
Maritime Activities on Bay and Inland Waters
The railroad ferry Contra Costa
dominates this image of the
California Maritime Academy. In
the background, the school's train-
ing ship sits docked beneath the
Carquinez Bridge, while the fore-
ground depicts the school's gymna-
sium. The ferry was dynamited in
the 1960s, but its remains are visible
to passersby at low tid
Maritime artist F. A. Zimmermann
captures the frenetic pace of maritime
activity on the bay in this image of
the steamer Antelope departing for
Sacramento in 1854. San Francisco's
proximity to the goldfields made it a
logical jumping-off place and port of
transshipment.
Courtesy California Maritime Academy Archives.
Courtesy of the artist. Copyright F. A. Zimmerman.
(www.fazimmerman.com; fazimmerman@gmail.com)
153
CHAPTER 9
Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
Just as whaling and fishing were important activities in maritime California, so too were
several other components of the coastal trade — notably sugar, coal, oil, general goods, and
passenger traffic — all discussed in this chapter. For many years, coastal and short-sea trade
was larger in scale and more important than overseas trade, and crucial in the development
of industrialization and urbanization that took place from the late eighteenth to the mid-
twentieth centuries. Despite this, the amount of coastal and short-sea trade scholarship
has been negligible, and may observers have either ignored or downplayed the role of this
form of transportation. As one observer states, "For most of US history, shipping on coastal
and inland waters has exceeded oceanic shipping in both volume and value America is a
brown-water nation, but with a blue-water consciousness." 1 Perhaps the airing here of the
important contributions the coastal trade made to the economic and social growth of the
West Coast of the United States will stimulate further research in this topic.
When most people think of maritime trade and transport, their minds draw first to
deepwater, international commerce. Since over 95 percent of all foreign trade is carried by
ship, this is understandable: the problem arises when one fails to recognize that coastal
commerce — carried on between two American ports — is far greater in terms of the number
of vessels engaged, seamen employed, and cargo moved. Moreover, for the four-decade peri-
od covered by this chapter (1870 to 1910), the United States dropped from second in tonnage
engaged in foreign trade to ninth. During that same period, the tonnage engaged in coastal
trade rose from 2.6 million tons to 6.5 million tons, a 3 percent annual growth rate. 2 In 1889,
to give but one example, over 650,000 voyages were made between Pacific coast ports alone;
the cargoes were telling: in addition to 4.2 million tons of lumber, they carried over a million
tons of agricultural produce and a comparable amount of coal. 3 Perhaps most notable, the
1.7 million tons of general cargo attest to the fact that seaborne commerce — and not railroad
or other form of overland transportation — reigned supreme throughout this era.
Trade between two American ports is decidedly different from that which marks inter-
national commerce. Since early in this nation's history, a series of restrictions, known collec-
tively as cabotage laws, have sought to protect this trade and limit it to US-flagged ships.
Cabotage laws take a variety of forms, but they usually operate via financial inducements or
penalties. Some laws may impose severe taxes on shippers who utilize foreign-flagged ships
to do, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, "their fetching and hauling." 4 Others effectively
exclude non-Americans from coastwise trade as a matter of national security and defense.
Various iterations of these cabotage laws have increased the requirements through the years:
1 Alex W. Roland, W. Jeffrey Bolster, and Alexander Keyssar, The Way of the Ship: America's Maritime
History Reenvisioned, 1600-2000 (Hoboken, NJ: John W. Wiley and Sons, 2008), 1.
2 John Armstrong, "The Role of Short-Sea, Coastal, and Riverine Traffic in Economic Development since
1750," Maritime History as World History, ed. Daniel Finamore (Gainesville: University Press of Florida,
2004), 119.
3 Wallace Martin, Sail and Steam on the Northern California Coast, 1850-1900 (San Francisco: National
Maritime Museum, 1983), 52.
4 Quoted in Joshua Smith, Voyages, Documents in American Maritime History: The Age of Sail (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 2009), 172
154
Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
since the 1920s, craft engaged in trade between two consecutive American ports needed to
be US built, flagged, officered, and crewed. This had important implications for coastwise
trade, implications that affected costs, business strategies, and management decisions.
The coastwise trader was not unknown before this period. Indeed, maritime
commerce had been important to San Francisco since its founding and the city's ports had
good facilities for general cargo even at that relatively early time. Before the development of
the transcontinental railroad (1869) and the opening of the Panama Canal (1914), the only
way to link the eastern and western shores of the United States was via maritime connec-
tions that braved the Cape Horn route or an amphibious venture that integrated maritime
routes with overland isthmian traffic. Operations such as the American-Hawaiian Steamship
Line, among the earliest to employ American-built steel freighters, connected the Atlantic
and Pacific coasts by way of the Straits of Magellan. This route was inaugurated in 1900 and
remained commercially viable and economically important until the mid-1950s.
Trade between the Atlantic coast and California represented the longest domestic
trade route in the world and the gold rush, as we have seen, depended upon this. From the
Atlantic, intercoastal traders brought different types of manufactured goods necessary
for building towns and exploiting the land. The fact that all necessities of life in early San
Francisco came from the East Coast led to two things: stimulation of shipbuilding on the
Atlantic Seaboard (since anything that sailed was already gone to California) and a premium
placed on speed. As we have already seen, the California market maintained New England
shipyards that turned out Downeasters in prodigious quantities, even when there was
scarcely any need for more wooden sailing ships, leading to the dramatic, if short-lived, era
of the clipper ship. The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 likewise played an important
role in California's maritime history, as the isthmian passage superseded the trip around
Cape Horn, reoriented trade, and replaced time-tested merchant connections with new rela-
tionships. 5 The completion of the isthmian route represented more than just a tremendous
engineering feat; by halving the distance between California and the East Coast, it further
strengthened and solidified the connections between the coasts.
For the purposes of this chapter, coastal trade includes that which links two American
ports, and for our purposes, we will consider Hawaii to be within this orbit. Although the
United States did not acquire that territory until the eve of the twentieth century, there
had been plans in place (and loopholes in the abovementioned laws) that allow it to be best
considered as part of the American economic sphere from the middle decades of the nine-
teenth century 6
California, in general, and San Francisco, in particular, had a long relationship with
Hawaii. Captains bound for the Golden Gate often called first at the Sandwich Islands,
taking on fresh water and supplies, repairing their storm-wracked vessels, and filling out
their complement of sailors by recruiting local kanaka. These native Hawaiians, deemed
to be the best sailors in the world, were seen in the fur- and seal-hunting expeditions of the
early nineteenth century, and as crew members of San Francisco-based whalers later in that
5 The canal opened to traffic on August 15, 1914, and was of almost immediate and immense benefit to the
city's maritime trade. The Panama Pacific International Exhibit of the following year was a testament to
this growth in trade.
6 See H. Brett Melendey, Hawaii: America's Sugar Territory, 1898-1959(Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press,
1999). See also Michael Doughtery, To Steal a Kingdom: Probing Hawaiian History (Waimanalo, HI: Island
Style Press, 1992).
155
Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
century. 7 The connections between California and Hawaii were not coincidental: over 50
percent of the ships that called at California between 1786 and 1848 also stopped at a Pacific
island, showing a deeper relationship than seasonal runs and shared crews. Despite Hawaii's
seemingly isolated location in the middle of the Pacific, "Honolulu merchants carried on
an active correspondence with their counterparts in California, demanding cleaner hides,
complaining of bloated warehouses, and inquiring of market prices." 8 While this back-
ground is important to contextualize and understand the strong connections between San
Francisco and Hawaii, the best manifestation of the California-island connection is seen in
the burgeoning sugar trade prominent in the years after the American Civil War.
During the 1870s, island sugar began to find a market in the States, despite the often-
vocal protestations of Southern producers seeking to maintain their monopoly on the crop,
and from some California producers who rankled at the thought of competition to their beet-
sugar monopoly. The Reciprocity Treaties of 1876 and 1882, which abolished the tariff on
Hawaiian goods, allowed island products to enter the US duty-free; in return, the American
government received an important naval base and coaling station at Pearl Harbor on the island
of Oahu. While Hawaiian nationalists bristled at the loss of autonomy and the implications for
their kingdom's sovereignty, mainland expatriates known as haoles were ecstatic at the pros-
pects for increased profit. It was the beginning of a long and controversial relationship, but
one that would be worked to great effect by certain San Francisco-based shippers and their
Hawaiian acolytes. In 1882, Adolph Claus Spreckels founded his Oceanic Steamship Company,
which inaugurated regular runs between the mainland and the islands. 9
Spreckels was an iconic figure in nineteenth-century business history 10 At a time when
tycoons were monopolizing the oil, steel, and transportation industries, he made his fortune
in a less dignified, but less risky, manner. A German immigrant, Spreckels came to San
Francisco and made a fortune as a brewer, supplying quality beer to thirsty miners and those
who came in their wake. With his wife and large family, he soon diversified his holdings
and purchased land in the Central Valley, growing beets then eventually entering the lucra-
tive sugar market. From there, he branched out to the Hawaiian Islands. Spreckels quickly
developed an integrated system wherein he owned several thousand acres of Hawaiian sugar
plantations, employed a gang of native laborers, commanded a fleet of ships that transported
the crop to the United States, and maintained a profitable sugar refinery in San Francisco.
Smaller firms, such as the Planters Line and the Hawaiian Line, faced financial ruin at the
hands of the Spreckels conglomerate. Threatened with financial ruin, they soon formed a
7 On kanaka, see David Chappell, "Ahab's Boat: Non-European Seamen in Western Ships of Exploration
and Commerce," in Sea Changes: Historicizing the Ocean, ed. Bernhard Klein and Gesa Mackenthun
(New York: Routledge Press, 2004), 75-90. See also David Chappell, Double Ghosts: Oceanian Voyagers
on Euroamerican Ships (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), and David Chappell, "Kru and Kanaka:
Participation by African and Pacific Island Sailors in Euroamerican Maritime Frontiers," International
Journal of Maritime History 6, no. 2 (December 1994): 83-114.
8 David Igler, "Diseased Goods: Global Exchanges in the Eastern Pacific Basin, 1770-1850," American
Historical Review 109, no. 3 (June 2004): 693-719, quotation on 707.
9 The Oceanic Steamship Company later expanded its operations, establishing service to Australia.
Benjamin Wright, San Francisco's Ocean Commerce: Past and Future (San Francisco: A. Carlisle and
Company, 1911).
10 The standard biography remains Jacob Adler, Claus Spreckels: The Sugar King in Hawaii (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1966). See also William Woodrow Cordray, "Claus Spreckels of California"
(PhD diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1935).
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Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
cooperative, the California and Hawaiian Sugar Company, based in the Carquinez Straits
community of Crockett. Among the leading firms associated with this entity was the ship-
ping firm of Hind, Rolph and Company. Founded in 1900 by James Rolph and George
Hind, the company exchanged Hawaiian sugar for coal and other commodities. 11 This San
Francisco-based firm developed a reputation for efficiency, but became notorious for oper-
ating "hellships" that subjected crewmembers to near-slave conditions on globe-circling
voyages. 12 In spite of these conditions, a profitable triangle trade soon developed: lumber
was shipped from the Pacific Northwest to Australia and exchanged for coal. The coal was
then transshipped to Hawaii, for use in power plants, locomotives, and all sorts of maritime
industries, including ships. There, it was exchanged for sugar cane that would ultimately
be transported to California. The journey was not without excitement (coal was subject
to spontaneous combustion) or enjoyment (oftentimes competing ships' crews engaged in
long-distance races), and represented another link in the chain that joined Victorian San
Francisco to a global commercial network. Most of the trade was carried in medium-sized
sailing craft (typically, from 850 to 1,200 tons) that operated out of San Francisco, and
which had a reputation for being "smart and fast."
Much of the raw sugar that came from Hawaii was processed at the California &
Hawaiian Sugar Company refinery located in Crockett on the shores of the Carquinez
Strait. Originally a flour mill, it served in that capacity from 1888 until 1897. In 1906, it
was converted to sugar refining and quickly established itself as the largest such facility in
the world, employing 1,700 workers capable of processing 2,250 tons of sugar per day. As
Crockett became synonymous with sugar refining, the Matson firm became incontrovert-
ibly linked with the shipment of sugar from Hawaii to the mainland.
William Matson was a Swedish immigrant, born in the auspicious year of
1849, who arrived in San Francisco shortly after the American Civil War. 13 A skilled
mariner, he was hired as a crewman on the personal yacht of sugar magnate Claus
Spreckels. Matson quickly rose to captain, ferrying coal from North Bay communi-
ties for use in the industrialized quarters of the city. His friendship with Spreckels
remained strong, and the elder businessman bankrolled his younger associate's
subsequent maritime ventures. Acquiring a small number of ships, Matson began
making regularly scheduled runs from San Francisco to Hawaii, delivering general
merchandise to plantation customers and returning with raw sugar for the refineries
in Crockett. His first departure out the Golden Gate, aboard Spreckels's three-masted
schooner Emma Claudina on April 10, 1882, bound for Hilo ushered in a new era in
Pacific coast maritime history. Realizing that the ship was too small, Matson replaced
it with a larger brigantine, Lurline, owned in partnership with his mentor. The
11 Rolph would serve as mayor of San Francisco from 1906 to 1930, and as governor of California from 1930
until his death four years later. Rolph, who had made a fortune in shipping, lost it there, too, becoming
overextended when federal authorities canceled his shipbuilding contract with the French government
at the end of World War I, just as the ships were nearing completion. Between 1919 and 1923, Rolph
lost $7 million. James Worthen, "Sunnyjiminthe Boiling Cauldron: The Fatal First Year of the Rolph
Administration," California History 83, no. 3 (2006): 28-44.
12 For a concise look at this issue, consult Kay Gibson, Brutality on Trial: "Hellfire" Pederson, "Fighting"
Hansen, and the Seaman's Act of 1915 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006).
13 The only full-length treatment of Matson remains this hagiographic account: John E. Cushing, Captain
William Matson: From Handy Boy to Ship Owner (New York: Newcomen Society in America, 1951).
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Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
budding business soon developed into a near monopoly on trade between the islands
and the mainland.
Matson was an innovator. Despite the fact that he continued to run sailing packets to
the islands as late as World War I, he kept a keen eye on new technology, introducing steam-
ers to the fleet in 1902. In addition to his use of new technologies (in 1905, partnership with
the Pacific Coast Oil Company led him to install oil-fired boilers in one of his steamers,
duplicating technology first adopted by the American-Hawaiian freighters Nevadan and
Nebraskan just three years earlier), he was willing to experiment and think outside the box.
Not content with simply shuttling sugar and general cargo back and forth from Hawaii to the
mainland, he diversified, and after 1901, many of his ships featured stately cabins in which
passengers could while away the voyage to Honolulu. Lurline II (1908) had accommodations
for 51; Wilhelmina (1910) could take 146. In the years that followed, Matson added newer and
larger ships to his fleet, which became more passenger than freight oriented: Malolo (1927)
could accommodate 690, and Mariposa (1931), Monterey (1931), and Lurline III (1932) a like
number. To handle the growing volume of passengers, Matson acquired the Moana Hotel
and built the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki. Until the advent of transpacific air travel in
the 1950s and 1960s, Matson virtually monopolized the passenger trade to Hawaii, serving
as a de facto arm of the local tourist industry.
In addition to island trade, a robust business in trade linked San Francisco to other
American ports. While lumber was the most common and most remunerative of coastal
cargoes, the relative lack of any overland transportation network necessitated that general
goods and cargo be delivered by maritime means. Items as diverse as agricultural goods,
building supplies, manufactured items, and fine luxury goods traveled from all points along
the Pacific coast to San Francisco, often returning with various goods produced there, or
transshipped from other locales. A report issued in the mid-1860s attests to the volume of
trade along the coast: 122 sloops, totaling 2,619 tons (for an average of 21.39 tons), could be
counted at any given time, though these were most likely used almost exclusively for inland
passages. The schooners were the workhorses of the coastal trade. Between 1850 and 1905,
182 two-masted, 112 three-masted, and 130 four-masted schooners were built on the Pacific
coast. Cheap to build, easy to operate and maintain, and relatively nimble and quick — the
sailing schooner Sadie made the 900 -mile trip from San Pedro to Gardiner, Oregon, in about
80 hours, for example — they were the preferred cargo carriers of their day. In one season,
291 sparsely manned schooners (averaging 55.8 tons) participated in the coastwise trade,
hauling lumber, shells, brick, and virtually any other commodity required by the denizens of
industrial, urban California. 14 While sailing schooners dominated, by the mid-1880s, steam
schooners such as Charles G. White's Surprise were encountered along the coast.
Coasting vessels provided contact with minor ports that otherwise were out of touch
with the rest of the world until the advent of the automobile and paved highways. Indeed,
travel and cargo transport up and down the coast were practical only by sea, and ubiquitous
lumber schooners were often pressed into service to deliver passengers and varied cargoes
to isolated northwest coves. They also linked the major cities of California. In the north,
lumber schooners often picked up cargoes other than those they intended to deliver: food-
stuffs like apples, potatoes, and prunes were commonly found on cargo manifests.
14 "Harbor Master's Report," San Francisco Municipal Report for 1864-1865, Cited in Martin, Sail and Steam
on the Northern California Coast, 46.
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Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
Coastal operations increased after the gold rush as San Francisco became a major
entrepot and the economic hub of the region stretching from San Diego to Alaska. The
city increasingly became the railroad and maritime center of the Pacific coast. One
contemporary mentioned:
The city of San Francisco itself, with its magnificent land-locked harbor and
central position, it may be that the scarcity of harbors on this coast is more
beneficial than otherwise. Everything centers here. She has no real rivals in her
commercial relations, and whatever other ports there are all pay her tribute. The
coasting voyages both north and south begin and end here. The lumber, grain,
wool, and other produce is shipped to us for sale and reshipment, and every little
chute, roadstead, or landing sends its products to and receives its supplies from
San Francisco, dealing with no other place and having no other connections. 15
In those days, a traveler from any point along the coast between the Mexican and
Canadian borders simply asked for a ticket to "the city" with complete assurance that
they would be routed to San Francisco. Likewise, cities around San Francisco advanced to
become maritime and manufacturing centers.
In a relationship not much different from the mercantilism that had dominated
California under the Spanish and Mexicans, a system developed whereby San Francisco
provided capital, entrepreneurial vision, and finished products to a vast hinterland that
supplied the metropole with customers, raw materials, and at times, a pliable workforce. San
Francisco became the metropolis of the Pacific coast, and the economic hub of the entire
region from San Diego to Alaska. As the city became a center of commerce and finance, some
of the capital accumulated there was invested in sailing trades, including the ownership of
vessels trading to the South Seas. 16 Other small packets, originally brigs and brigantines — but
eventually steamers operated by the Oceanic Steamship Company (a Spreckels subsidiary
founded in 1883) — linked San Francisco to Pacific islands other than Hawaii, bringing mail,
passengers, and sundry cargoes on round-trip voyages averaging a sprightly three months. 17
In addition to the building supplies and materials associated with the lumber trade,
agricultural products, and assorted general cargo, San Francisco needed fuel for their vari-
ous enterprises. Before the general use of oil for fuel on the Pacific coast, vast quantities of
coal were imported from the mines of the Pacific Northwest, the American East Coast, and
abroad. Good-quality coal averaged $20 per ton in the 1850s, dropping to $11 during the
following decade. As a result, a regular coast trade was established between Puget Sound
and San Francisco; despite its notoriously poor quality, coal production in Vancouver rose
sharply in the late nineteenth century from 400,000 tons to more than a million. The local
coal was of such poor quality — one contemporary characterized it as "dirt that sometimes
burns" — that the reliance on Pacific Northwest, Australian, or other imported varieties is
15 January 1879 Supplement to the San Francisco Journal of Commerce, cited in Martin, Sail and Steam on the
Northern California Coast, 52.
16 An indispensable look at these issues is offered by Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power,
Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
17 The record for fastest transit by sailing ship between San Francisco and Hawaii (and Papeete) was long held
by the general cargo carriers produced by Matthew Turner. See Diane Cooper, "Surveying the Pacific: the
Voyages of the Galilee," Mains'l Haul; A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 34, no. 1 (1998): 36-45.
159
Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
easily understood. Indeed, after lumber, coal was the second-largest output from the Pacific
Northwest, and much of this cargo was carried in New England-built square-riggers. With
little to no premium on speed, the tried-and-true medium of coal transport was the sail-
ing coaster. To serve this need, in the 1870s and 1880s, a number of Downeasters were sold
to San Francisco firms for the trade between that city and Cape Flattery, and regular Cape
Homers were known to make a voyage or two between the Golden Gate and Puget Sound
or British Columbia while waiting for a grain charter to Liverpool. 18
British ships that carried grain from San Francisco to Liverpool routinely arrived
with coal, which was in demand in California and which was the only raw material that
the United Kingdom was in a position to export to this country. An important triangu-
lar trade developed whereby British manufactured items (including iron and chemicals)
made their way to Australasia, where it was exchanged for Australian coal, eventually
making it to San Francisco in a globe-girdling voyage that took the better part of a year.
In 1891, there were 107 sailing ship arrivals of coal in San Francisco: as late as 1908,
there were still 56 such arrivals. Throughout the period, cargoes of manufactured goods
routinely arrived atop a hold of coal. 19
The importance of coal can be seen in the diverse vessels that brought it to San
Francisco. In addition to Downeasters and grain ships, colliers counted among their
number clipper ships such as Dashing Wave (which enjoyed a reputation as the fastest coal
ship on the Pacific) and Donald McKay's Glory of the Seas (which served as a collier for
seventeen years) resigned to hauling cargo significantly less fashionable than those they had
carried during their heyday 20 Bulky, low-revenue commodities attracted ships designed
more with an eye to cargo capacity and economy of operation. As one observer noted,
"the winds serve the vessels cheaper than the coal does the engine, and canvas yet retains
it supremacy over iron in the carrying trade in this part of the world." 21 Clippers were not
the only vessels engaged in the trade, and as efficiencies improved, steamers entered the
fray. Ships from the Saginaw Steel Steamship Company carried 3,500 to 4,000 tons of coal
at eleven knots, often completing three round-trips per month and earning about $20,000
gross per month. 22
While the maritime implications of the coal trade were obvious, it was destined to
be eclipsed by a new source of energy and fuel. With Edwin Drake's discovery of oil at
Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, the stage was set for coal and whale oil illuminants to bow
to petroleum. California wells began flowing in the 1870s, but within a short period, the state
consumed more oil than it produced; the 4.1 million gallons produced in 1881, was four times
more than the previous year, but it still fell behind local demand. During this early period,
petroleum shipping along the coast initially involved little more than moving kerosene from
the handful of small refineries that drew upon the seepage in southern California fields.
While tankers are now the standard petroleum carriers, this was not always the case. In the
18 L. E. Fredman, "Coals from Newcastle; Aspects of the Trade with California," Australian Journal of
Politics and History 29, no. 3 (December 1983): 440-47.
19 See Robert Carter, Windjammers: The Final Story (Dural, NSW: Rosenberg Publishing Company, 2004).
20 Giles T. Brown, Ships that Sail No More: Maritime Transport from San Diego to Puget Sound (Lexington:
University of Kentucky Press, 1966).
21 San Francisco Journal of Commerce, cited in Martin, Sail and Steam on the Northern California Coast, 52.
22 Francis G. Jenkins, "The Saginaw Steel Steamship Company and its Steamers," American Neptune 42
(1982): 245-75.
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Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
early years of the oil trade, Downeasters found ready cargoes in case oil, so named because it
was shipped in wooden crates containing a pair of five-gallon tins of kerosene. For the better
part of two decades, Downeasters carried three to four million barrels of oil annually to Asia
and Oceania, reaching a peak of seven million barrels by World War I.
Many predicted that the lack of coal deposits would limit California's oil produc-
tion and that the state could never surpass more established petroleum producers like
Pennsylvania. These prognosticators could not have been more wrong. By 1890, the state
produced 303,360 barrels, and within two years of that date, Edward Doheny operated
the first oil well within the city limits of Los Angeles. A petulant city council forced him to
curtail his operations after the ruin of the district for residential purposes. This stimulated
a search for alternative fields within the state, and soon, to the shock and delight of earlier
naysayers, California was producing a quarter of the world's supply of "illuminating oil,"
or kerosene. Between 1890 and 1898, oil production increased by 1,400 percent, grow-
ing a further 750 percent in the following half decade. Greater levels of production led to
changes in the ships that handled the product. Production levels of 4 million barrels in 1900
climbed to 77 million barrels just a decade later, and much of this crude oil was refined and
processed at Richmond in San Francisco Bay. The cargo was delivered mainly via barge
or sailing craft, though in 1903, the steamer Whittier, with a capacity of 20,000 tons of
crude oil, ushered in the age of petroleum tankers on the West Coast. By 1911, California
produced 63 percent of the nation's petroleum, becoming the world's greatest oil-producing
region. 23 Production grew steadily until it hit 100 million barrels during World War I, before
leveling off at 300 million barrels in the late 1920s (following the discovery of lucrative fields
at Huntington Beach, Santa Fe Springs, and Signal Hill Field [Long Beach] in the early years
of that decade). Even by that relatively late date, most shipments went by barge or sailing
vessel (including the museum ship Falls of Clyde).
Examples of the types of ships engaged in the petroleum trade are found in the
records of the Anglo-American Oil Company. A subsidiary of Standard Oil, this British
firm ordered ships in pairs from the Sewall Shipyard of Maine. These steel carriers weighed
over 3,000 tons gross and were to be used for the long routes from the Atlantic Seaboard to
the Orient. Rivaling anything afloat under the British, German, or French flags in carrying
capacity, they were well suited to the long passage through the Atlantic, Indian, and west-
ern Pacific Oceans.
Among the most notable of the Sewall creations were a trio of four-masted barks
built for Standard Oil: Astral, Acme, and Atlas. 24 Entering the age of steel construction
when steam was replacing sail was a venture that the Standard Oil Company felt sure was
a profitable business to serve the Far East case oil trade. American navigation laws ensured
reasonably full employment, and favorable cargo protection laws to employ US-flagged
ships were a positive inducement to the trade. Thus the large shipments of case oil from
New York and Baltimore to Japan, China, and the Philippines were guaranteed cargoes
outward. Homeward bound there was Hawaiian sugar, and frequently domestic coal
cargoes from the East Coast to US Navy coaling ports. Acme was thus employed from her
23 Among the craft associated with this trade was the tug Hercules, now a museum ship berthed at the Hyde
Street Pier in San Francisco. An oceangoing tug, Hercules towed oil barges along the California coast
from 1908 through 1910.
24 These were among only a dozen iron or steel square-riggers ever built in the United States.
161
Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
launching in 1901 for a dozen years, trampling around the world. In 1913, she was sold to
the Alaska Packers Association, joining her sisters in the Alaska cannery trade. That year,
she was renamed Star of Poland and given a major overhaul in Alameda, with living quar-
ters for Chinese cannery workers and San Francisco fishermen. Star of Poland made four
trips to Alaska; at the beginning of each season she went to Nanaimo, British Columbia, for
coal, and returned to San Francisco to distribute it to the other ships. She subsequently was
chartered to load a full cargo of lumber in Puget Sound for Australia, followed by wheat to
Callao, and finally, nitrate to San Francisco. Wartime freight rates increased and the ship
was then chartered through Struthers and Dixon (in San Francisco) to the US Shipping
Board to carry general cargo to Manila. Partly loaded with general cargo for San Francisco,
she departed Manila in August. She wrecked along the Japanese coast on September 15,
1918, a total loss. The Alaska Packers were paid in excess of $350,000 by the US government
for the loss of the ship. 25
Passenger trade between two American ports was not restricted to those who trav-
eled on Matson liners from San Francisco to Hawaii. Vessels associated with the Pacific
Mail Steamship Company (and its competitors) provided the principal link between the
city and the Atlantic coast through the Civil War. Passengers arriving via this medium
commented on the good food, favorable accommodations, and speed of transit, a holy trin-
ity for transcontinental passengers until the arrival of the railroad in 1869. Even when the
Transcontinental Railroad (1869) and its feeder lines cut into this monopoly, passenger
service between San Francisco and other California and West Coast ports remained impor-
tant — and in some places paramount — until the advent of automobiles and freeways in the
twentieth century. The most notable players in coastal operations were the Pacific Coast
Steamship Company and the Admiral Line, which integrated outlying areas into a nexus of
trade that began and ended in San Francisco. Lumber carriers, as we have seen, were outfit-
ted with passenger accommodations, particularly after the application of steam technology
made travel somewhat more accessible. Liners also linked the various cities of California.
Probably one of the most important events of the 1890s — and one whose potentialities were
most clearly recognized at the time — was the successful conclusion of Los Angeles's long
fight to obtain an appropriation for the construction of a deepwater harbor at San Pedro.
The harbor at Wilmington (connected to Los Angles by rail in 1869) became a major trans-
shipment point for items such as wheat, wine, fruit, and other agricultural products, partic-
ularly in the 1870s, after the federal government made small improvements to the harbor.
With these improvements, reliable passenger operations could be developed. Sporadic
service became more regularized in the years before World War I, and was dominated by
the Pacific Coast Steamship Company and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. Beginning
in 1863, Ben Holliday, the self-proclaimed "Stagecoach King" organized the California,
Oregon, and Mexico Steamship Company, which he later restructured as the North Pacific
Transportation Company. 26 It established a network of coastal lines stitching together
ports from Alaska to Mexico, only to collapse with the rest of Holladay's transportation
empire in 1876. Its ships and lines would be taken up by Goodall, Nelson, and Perkins (later
incorporated as the Pacific Coast Steamship Company) where they would eventually incor-
25 Harold Huycke, "Star Fleet" Yachting, February 1960, 1-5.
26 In 1866, Holliday sold his stagecoach operations to Wells Fargo and Company.
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Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
porate some twenty different West Coast ports until that entity's collapse. 27 Later arrivals
included the San Francisco and Portland Steamship Company (known as "the big three"
for the number of vessels it operated), the Great Northern Pacific Steamship Company
(which linked Portland and Los Angeles), and H. F. Alexander's Admiral Line. 28 From 1910,
Admiral Line began operating a pair of vessels, the turbined Harvard and Yale, which made
the run from Los Angeles to San Francisco in nineteen hours, a savings of five hours over
the competition. Beginning in 1921, the liners connected San Francisco to Los Angeles with
four-times-a-week service. They also coordinated their sailings with various rail lines and
streetcars, ushering in a system of commuter intermodalism. The San Francisco Chronicle
noted that the development "will revolutionize coastwise passenger traffic." 29 Despite luxu-
rious accommodations and travel times that rivaled railcars, the fares were modest: $8.35
for the Los Angeles to San Francisco leg, with an additional $2.00 for service to San Diego.
Rooms ranged from $1.00 to $8.00 with meals available for an additional $1.00. Departing
the Golden Gate at 4:20 p.m., the luxurious vessels arrived at 10:00 the following morning,
and were ready for the reverse trip in just six-and-a-half hours. 30 Other entrepreneurs, such
as those associated with the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, extended service to San
Diego and Seattle, connecting to those ports via San Francisco and San Pedro, and were
soon joined by rivals such as the Southern Pacific.
Admiral Line maintained its operations until 1918, when both Harvard and Yale were
requisitioned by the government to serve as troopships during World War I. Even while
serving in Europe they maintained a close connection to California, as seen in a letter the
crew of Yale sent to the "to the people of San Francisco": "We are proud to say that we are
a California ship and a California crew, composed mostly of boys from San Francisco and
vicinity, and when it is all over over here we are coming back to the city of the Golden Gate
which we all love so well. So dear friends, kindly keep a spot in your hearts warm for us." 31
After the conflict, both vessels returned to the West Coast passenger trade, this time
in the service of the Los Angeles Steamship Company (LASSCO). 32 Burning oil after their
conversion from naval use, the twin ships set speed records for their new owners, averaging
over twenty-four knots on some of their early runs, albeit at rates that were nearly double
their prewar standards. The increased rates, coupled with the loss of Harvard in 1931 and
the increasing encroachment of automobile traffic in the 1930s signaled the end of an era for
coastwise passenger trade.
27 The Pacific Coast Steamship Company was established by Goodall and Perkins in 1877. It lasted until
1916, when it was bought out by H. F. Alexander and reorganized as the Pacific Steamship Company,
whose operations lasted until 1936. By the First World War, the lines operated by the Central Pacific and
Union Pacific Railroads had made serious inroads into passenger travel and effectively dominated all
competition on this route by the 1930s.
28 The Big 3 was a subsidiary of Union Pacific, transporting passengers — some 55,000 per annum by 1915 —
and freight to San Francisco.
29 San Francisco Chronicle, December 21, 1910.
30 Each vessel carried 565 passengers and averaged nearly 25 knots during the voyage. For more on these
vessels, see George F. Gruner, The White Flyers, Harvard and Yale: American Coastwise Travel (San
Francisco: Associates of the National Maritime Museum Library, 2002).
31 San Francisco Chronicle, December 22, 1918.
32 LASSCO expanded operations to Hawaii, but was unsuccessful in its competition with Matson. In
1931, it was acquired by its rival, though it operated as a subsidiary until 1937. Martin Cox and Gordon
Ghareeb, Hollywood to Honolulu: The Los Angeles Steamship Company (Palo Alto, CA: Glencannon Press,
2009). Admiral Lines remained in business until 1936 when it became a victim of the Great Depression.
163
Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
While the passenger trade was a major component of coastal operations, the real
impact of such traffic would be seen in international immigration, a topic covered in the
next chapter. Nonetheless, the intercoastal trade was a major component of maritime
California in the years between 1914 and 1950, and vessels engaged in such trade constitut-
ed a sizable percentage of all clearances. This trade has virtually ceased to exist today.
Lightship Relief
The sheer volume of trade along the California coast served as an impetus for the devel-
opment and maintenance of various aids to navigation. The Lightship Relief (WLV 605)
currently berthed at Oakland's Jack London Square, adjacent to the former presidential
yacht Potomac, is an excellent example of how the government addressed the hazards
of navigating California's waterways. In places where lighthouse construction was
impractical (owing to cost, location, current, or other factors) lightships were utilized to
assist mariners along treacherous coasts. From 1820 until the 1980s, some 170 light-
ships served as floating lighthouses, marking shallow river crossings, offshore hazards,
reefs, and other obstructions. Lightships employed visible, audio, and radio signals to
warn unsuspecting mariners of hidden dangers, and remained in place through the
most severe weather conditions imaginable. Most of these vessels were constructed and
maintained by the US Lighthouse Service (1789-1939), with a small number contributed
by the Coast Guard after that agency absorbed the former. Built at the Rice Brothers
Shipyard in Boothbay, Maine, in 1950, WLV-605 is one of these.
Entering service off Delaware Bay the following year, she was transferred to
Blunt's Reef along the northern California coast in 1960. For the better part of a decade,
WLV-605 (then known as Blunt's since lightships took the name of the region where
they were stationed) served the Mendocino Coast. By 1969, the vessel was redesignated
Relief as testimony to the role she would fill, allowing permanently stationed lightships
to return to port while she served as substitute at various locations along the Pacific
coast. A relatively small crew (ten to fifteen) served aboard Relief, and welcomed the
bimonthly arrival of Coast Guard tenders that brought mail, supplies, fuel, and a fresh
contingent of crewmembers.
Relief was decommissioned in 1975, following a quarter century of service. Failed
attempts to convert her to a museum ship resulted in her sale to a private individual,
who in turn donated the ship to the US Lighthouse Society in 1986. Since that time, she
has remained in Oakland, where she underwent extensive restoration, including a stint
in local dry-docks. One of only two lightships still afloat on the West Coast, Relief was
designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990.
t
it ' i
RELIEF
• TB^I. .
164
Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
The trade and transport of sugar was a
major feature of California's maritime
economy. Here, an unidentified four-
masted bark is seen at the California and
Hawaiian Sugar refinery in Crockett.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. L. Korbell Collection. B1.789.
Pacific Mail steamer Golden City, built in
1867, sails along the California Coast. For
generations, Pacific Mail was the leading
maritime entity along the entire coast,
with a major presence in the San Francisco
Bay Area.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park, B7.4942n1.
Lumber schooners C. A. Thayer and Wapama
at rest in San Francisco. The two historic
vessels represent different stages in the
lumber trade, the single-most important
activity for maritime San Francisco in the
late nineteenth century.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park, A1 1.20341.
165
Coastal Operations: Sugar, Coal, Oil, Passengers
Steam schooner Little Jewelbeating along
the California coast.Vessels such as this
often transported passengers and general
cargo along the coast in addition to their
complement of lumber.
Beginning in the 1850s, passenger service
along the Pacific coast linked distant commu-
nities. The side-wheeler Columbia united San
Francisco with Portland, while the steam tug
Goliah did the same for the former and San
Diego. Regrettably, many of these ships were
past their prime, a factor that led to an inor-
dinate number of explosions and sinkings.
Even newer craft were susceptible to disaster.
Here, Pacific Mail steamer Golden Gate is
seen aflame off the coast of Mexico in 1862 in
a hand-colored print by N. Currier.
Steam schooner Wapama in her current
condition. The last of a historic fleet of
steam schooners, she was long part of the
historic vessels maintained by the San
Francisco Maritime National Historical
Park. She currently awaits disposal in
Richmond, California.
Steam schooner Speedwell. With a full
load of lumber that totals some two million
board feet, and accommodations for forty,
she was nothing if not efficient.
1
1 1
■i>i ^Af y
Se£B ph
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. B7.14, 510n.
Courtesy of Stephen J. and Jeremy W. Potash
Collection. Copyright Stephen J. and Jeremy
W. Potash (Steve@Potashco.com).
^^SsSj" 1 ^™^^-^
Photo courtesy Paul Judge.
Photo courtesy Steve Priske.
Copyrightwww.tallshipsofsanfrancisco.com
(tallships@comcast.net).
166
CHAPTER 10
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers,
and Foreign Trade
International commerce is a denning feature of the modern economy. Today, more than
95 percent of America's foreign trade (by volume) arrives via ship. This is not just a recent
phenomenon. While trade between California and other parts of the globe was not always
as important as it is today, and although it often lagged behind the value and contributions
afforded to coastal commerce, it was neither unimportant nor statistically insignificant.
Indeed, deepwater trade is a major component of California's past that must be addressed if
we are to take a comprehensive look at the region's maritime history.
Direct and continuous contact with other parts of the globe transformed San
Francisco into a cosmopolitan city with a diverse population and access to international
culture. Maritime links brought immigrants to this country from places that could never be
supplied by overland routes. Among the most important aspects of California's foreign mari-
time connections have been the grain trade (already discussed), passenger and immigrant
trade, and the linking of California to Asian and Pacific island markets. This chapter investi-
gates these disparate strands.
While commercial relations between California and other parts of the globe existed
prior to 1850, they expanded tremendously afterward. Throughout the nineteenth century,
the relaxing of mercantilist proscriptions that had been in place since the time of Cortes
opened West Coast ports to the ships of all nations. Under Spanish suzerainty, illicit
commerce centered on the rich natural resources offered to whalers and furriers. During the
quarter century of Mexican rule, Californios welcomed East Coast vessels bringing manu-
factured items in exchange for locally produced hides and tallow. This growing international
trade remained small but brisk until the gold rush and its influx of Argonauts transformed
West Coast harbors into international ports-of-call.
The international dimensions of the California gold rush have been well documented
and need not be repeated here. The gold rush fleet was composed of countless vessels from
innumerable countries and immigrants from every corner of the globe flocked to California.
Craft from Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia sailed alongside those from New
York, Boston, Savannah, and New Orleans. Likewise, the grain trade, largely controlled by
British interests but counting French, German, and other participants among their number
(and employing various South American trade partners involved in the guano and nitrate
trades), was a major factor in converting San Francisco and the state it dominated into
important hubs for foreign traffic. 1 But it was Asia that was most important for American
businessmen at this time. The prospect of trade with the seemingly inexhaustible markets of
the so-called Celestial Kingdom dominated the minds of American businessmen. The advent
of steam technology, widespread by the 1860s, led to increased trade with the region. It also
Guano imports to the United States grew tenfold in the decade between 1850 and 1860, by which time
San Francisco was processing more than 140,000 tons per annum, good enough for tenth most in the
nation. Commerce and Navigation, Report of the Secretary of the Treasury for the Year Ending 30 June
1850 (Washington, DC: Gideon and Company, 1851), 148; and Commerce and Navigation, Report of the
Secretary of the Treasury for the year ending 30 June 1861(Washington: GPO, 1861), 1:230, 392.
167
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
led to vastly increased immigration from China and other parts of the Orient, a trend of
tremendous influence that forever changed the nature and composition of California society.
Although Asian immigration to the American West occurred before the middle of the
nineteenth century, large-scale movement of people from China and other Pacific nations to
California was limited until the marine engine was perfected in the 1860s. 2 In the early days
of steam technology, inefficient power plants, subject to the corrosive effect of scaling (caused
by the buildup of saltwater in the condensers and engines) coupled with massively inefficient
uses of fuel (voyages required tons of coal and hundreds of cords of wood) made transpa-
cific steamer voyages prohibitively expensive, if not downright impossible. In 1862, as the
East Coast was deeply involved in the Civil War, Cortes and Columbia, the first merchant
vessels to steam to Asia from the Pacific coast, set out for Shanghai within three days of one
another. Later that same year, the Prussian steamer Scotland made the first successful round-
trip between San Francisco and Hong Kong, though it should be noted that each of these early
ventures was described as "experimental." 3 It took a combination of improved marine tech-
nology and the stimulus of federal subsidies to make this a reality 4 But these hurdles did not
dissuade ingenious entrepreneurs from seeking to tap into the Asian market at an early point.
American contact with China can be traced to the burgeoning trade between the
infant United States and that country after 1783. 5 A search for commodities that would
resonate with Chinese consumers took representatives from the United States to the Levant
(for opium), Hawaii (for sandalwood), the South Pacific (for beche-de-mer), the Pacific
Northwest (for sea otter furs), and Micronesia (for sea slugs and bird nests, used by culinary
artisans). Merchants returned from China with tea, silks, porcelain, and other conspicu-
ous consumables, which allowed citizens of the newly independent United States to show
their status; rarely, they brought passengers, the majority of whom were students or diplo-
matic officials sent to experience foreign cultures firsthand. 6 According to contemporary
reports, the first Chinese to arrive in American California — two men and a woman — did so
aboard the brig Eagle from Hong Kong in February 1848. By the following year, the number
of Chinese had grown to 55. All this would change with the discovery of gold. By January
1850, there were 789 Chinese men and a pair of Chinese women in California; a year later,
there were 4,018 men and 7 women. The trickle had become a deluge. An unscientific census
Raymond L. Cohn, "The Transition from Sail to Steam in Immigration to the United States," in Maritime
Aspects of Migration, ed. by Klaus Friedland (Koln: BohlauVerlag, 1989). See also W. C. Banner, "A History
of Trans-Pacific Service," Japan: Magazine of Overseas Travel 16, no. 5 (1927): 7-12.
E. Mowbray Tate, Transpacific Steam: The Story of Steam Navigation from the Pacific Coast of North
America to the Far East and the Antipodes, 1867-1941 (New York: Cornwall Books, 1986), 23.
Some steam-powered vessels crossed the Pacific, obviously, but always with the assistance of a full
complement of sails. Contemporary accounts can be found in Thomas Rainey, Ocean Steam Navigation
and the Ocean Post (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1858); and Charles Beebe Stuart, Naval and
Mail Steamers of the United States (New York: Charles B. Morton, 1853).
See Mary A. Y. Gallagher, "Charting a New Course for the China Trade: The Late Eighteenth Century
American Model," in The Early Republic and the Sea: Essays on the Naval and Maritime History of the Early
United States, ed. William S. Dudley and Michael J. Crawford (Washington, DC: Brassey's Press, 2001).
See also E. Mowbray Tate, "American Merchant and Naval Contacts with China, 1784-1850," American
Neptune (July 1971): 177-91; and Robert Schwendinger, "Bibles and Opium: China's Early Trade," Oceans
(May 1978): 21-27.
See Thomas N. Layton, The Voyage of the Frolic: New England Merchants and the Opium Trade (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), and Thomas N. Layton, Gifts from the Celestial Kingdom: A
Shipwrecked Cargo for Gold Rush California (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002).
168
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
placed the number at 11,787 (of whom all but 7 were male) by Mayl852. 7 Following the arrival
of nearly 800 Chinese aboard The Lord Warriston, one correspondent ("Peregrine Pilgrim")
linked the disruptive nature of Chinese immigration to shipping companies:
There is another object to be gained by the course of masterful inactivity — a
great, a detestable, and a damnable object — and it is commerce. By allowing
innumerable hordes of semi-human Asiatics to come to our shores, the trade
with Asia will be increased; there will be an increased demand for shipping;
the ship owners will make larger dividends; the trade and profits of many large
commercial houses will be increased, and the general interests of commerce will
be promoted. This is the direct and moving influence that shuts up the mouths of
the press and stifles legislation. 8
Despite the fears of xenophobic Californians, Chinese continued to arrive on the
shores of the Golden State in impressive numbers. By 1866, approximately 105,000 Chinese
had paid S40-S50 each for the two-month journey to California, and in the decade and a half
following the gold rush, more than $7 million was collected in fares from emigrants alone. 9
These numbers increased due to the development of and advancements in steam propul-
sion. By 1867, Congress appropriated half a million dollars to Pacific Mail to operate steamer
service from San Francisco to Hong Kong, requiring twelve annual round-trip voyages. The
coming of steam navigation made transpacific voyages affordable and profitable. Indeed,
although San Francisco had become a great international port with the gold rush, it catapult-
ed to new heights at about the same time the steamship became economically and mechani-
cally suitable for long, transoceanic routes, making the two processes virtually synonymous
and coterminous. 10 Not coincidentally, at the same time transcontinental railroads cut into
the profit margins of Pacific Mail steamers, that company began looking for new markets
since dwindling passenger traffic and the absence of mail contracts made failure a very real
possibility.
After Pacific Mail's vessels demonstrated the utility of steam passenger transportation
on the Panama run, it was not long before they branched out across the Pacific. 11 Indeed,
it was a veteran of the Panama route (though not a Pacific Mail vessel) that first proved the
utility of such a venture, when Monumental City steamed from San Francisco to Australia in
1867. 12 Many saw immense benefit in the prospects for increased trade. One local newspaper
opined, "If China will send us the needed labor and cultivate a trade with us, in a few years
we shall be able to do for them what England, nor Russia, nor France can ever do — send
7 Daily Alta California, May 15, 1852.
8 Daily Alta California, July 29, 1853. Later, others surmised that a close relationship between shipping
companies and the press silenced reports that would be injurious to the company's bottom line. Life,
Diary and Letters of Oscar Lovell Shafter, ed. Flora Haines Apponyi Loughead (San Francisco: The Blair-
Murdock Company, 1915).
9 Robert Schwendinger, Ocean of Bitter Dreams: Maritime Relations between China and the United States,
1850-1915 (Tuscon, AZ: Westernlore Press, 1988).
10 E. Mowbray Tate, Transpacific Steam: The Story of Steam Navigation from the Pacific Coast of North
America to the Far East and the Antipodes, 1867-1941 (New York: Cornwall Books, 1986).
11 John Haskell Kemble, Sidewheelers across the Pacific (San Francisco: Museum of Science and History
1942). See also Edward R. Gundelfinger, "The Pacific Mail Steamship Company, 1847-1917" (Master's
Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1917).
12 She was destined for use in the Australian coastal trade, with regular service between Sydney and Melbourne.
169
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
their starving people cheap bread and make famine impossible." 13 Inspired, Pacific Mail
ordered four gigantic wooden side-wheel steamers, America, China, Great Republic, and
Japan, to fulfill their 1865 mail contract. Costing $1 million each and averaging 360 feet
and 4,352 tons, they were the largest wooden steamships found anywhere in the world, and
based overwhelmingly on passenger traffic. Accommodations for nearly 1,500 passengers
and a crew of 120 were impressive, but these ships were already obsolete by the time they
were christened, since shippers elsewhere were shifting to iron hulls and screw propel-
lers. 14 Considerable quantities of coal had to be bunkered aboard the ships, ranging from
3,800 to 4,500 tons, since there were no facilities along the 5,200-mile transpacific route at
which they could take on supplies or provisions. Sails on three towering masts augmented
engines that drove a forty-five-foot paddlewheel. 15 When the newly ordered China was
unavailable to inaugurate this service, a veteran of the Panama run was reconditioned and
pressed into service. 16 The 340-foot, 3,700 ton Colorado was the first: departing the Golden
Gate on New Year's Day, she reached Yokohama on January 24, and Hong Kong six days
later. Before World War I, she inaugurated 1,200 round-trip journeys between the Golden
Gate and Asia. 17 Bunkers held 1,500 tons of coal for the trek, which the 1,800-horsepower
walking beam engines used at an average of 45 tons daily. This combination of freshly
painted wooden ships, combustible materials, and massive boilers made for an ecology of
disaster. Even though Pacific Mail had a reputation for well-drilled crews, disasters some-
times occurred, as on December 17, 1874, whenjapan was lost with 415 souls en route from
Yokohama to Hong Kong. 18
Despite the dangers and discomfort associated with the trip, Pacific Mail had no
problem recruiting passengers from Asia. America, for example, delivered over 700 immi-
grants on its inaugural San Francisco run. Before passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the
number of Chinese passengers averaged 1,000 on each eastbound crossing and exceeded
1,400 on some passages, far in excess of the legal limit for such journeys. First-class passen-
gers, regaled with opulent and lavish entertainments, shelled out as much $300 for passage
to Hong Kong. Chinese merchants acted as agents, earning a commission for every passen-
ger they brought to the company. 19 Chinese steerage immigrants, eschewing the stately
13 Daily Alta California, December 31, 1866.
14 By this time, American manufacturers were not yet capable of matching their British counterparts in
producing iron screw hulls, but by 1870, the Delaware River yards had caught up to their European
rivals. Even at that time, Pacific Mail was hesitant to adopt the new technology, despite its reputation
for greater efficiency, since the flexibility of their ships' hulls would not allow for the use of an inter-
nal propeller shaft. Inevitably and inexorably, Pacific Mail adopted iron hulls, screw propellers, and
compound engines once other shippers had proven them successful.
15 The sails were sometimes needed, as was the case for Great Republic on her third voyage, when a broken
shaft hobbled the craft some 1,400 miles from Yokohama.
16 Retrofitting included the addition of an extra mast and a rigid strengthening around the waterline to
protect against the beating of Pacific storms. She was skippered by Captain George Bradbury. Pacific Mail
Steamship Company Papers (Mail and Passengers), mss, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
17 Pacific Mail subsequently established service to Shanghai via Kobe and Nagasaki, using the vessels Costa
Rica, Golden Age, Ariel, New York, Oregonian, and Nevada.
18 America burned under suspicious circumstances at Yokohama in 1872 and Grand Republic sank off the
Columbia River in 1879. Only China survived, continuing transpacific operations until she was broken
up at Tiburon in 1886. Likewise, transpacific steamer Oceanic — carrying 192 passengers in excess of its
allotment — collided with a coastwise steamer in San Francisco Bay in 1888, and on February 22, 1902,
the Rio de Janeiro was lost in the same waters, near Fort Point, with the loss of 131 passengers and crew.
19 Pacific Mail Steamship Company, Commissions Paid to Chinese Merchants, mss., Huntington Library.
170
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
first-class cabins for more Spartan accommodations, paid $40 per head for the return
journey to America. The fares did little to offset the high cost of operations (but for its mail
contract, the company would have lost money routinely), and profits were unsecure and
often nonexistent. 20
Faced with the reality of the situation, and motivated by federal subsidies, Pacific
Mail abandoned its wooden side-wheelers in favor of iron-hulled screw propellers. 21 In
1874, they contracted with John Roach & Sons of Chester, Pennsylvania, for the 5,100-ton
iron screw steamers City of Peking and City ofTokio. 22 At over 5,000 tons and measuring 423
feet long with a beam of 48 feet, they were the largest ships in the American fleet. 23 By that
time, Pacific Mail operated forty ships on runs to as many Pacific ports; within two decades,
competition with other lines and racist legislation halved its fleet.
Pacific Mail's dock (opened on the Brannan Street wharf) represented the nexus of
the largest and most important West Coast steamship lines, where cargo and passengers
were routinely loaded and unloaded into detention facilities and adjoining warehouses. 24
Nearly all the newcomers departed from the southern Chinese port of Guangzhou (formerly
Canton), and almost all were male. Their identifiable differences, "strange" customs, and
foreign habits made them easy targets for violence and racist legislation. Taxed out of the
mines, they took employment wherever they could find it, including as laborers on the trans-
continental railroad or in the shrimp fishery. When forced from even these occupations,
many Chinese sought jobs in restaurants and laundry facilities, among the few niche occu-
pations still open to them. Still others returned to Asia.
One potential form of employment open to Chinese was to crew aboard transpacific
vessels. Pacific Mail's service relied on Chinese crewmen, though officers' billets open only
to Caucasians. 25 Hiring from 80 to 120 Chinese seamen, stewards, and engine-room atten-
dants in Hong Kong for each voyage saved the company substantial sums of money, but drew
the ire of maritime union members who felt these jobs rightfully belonged to Americans. 26
While cannery owners and operators might argue for more cheap Chinese laborers, work-
ing-class whites on the West Coast often viewed the Chinese as competitors, which created
20 John Haskell Kemble, "A Hundred Years of Pacific Mail." American NeptuneW (1950): 123-43.
21 The Postal Act of 1872 awarded Pacific Mail a half-million-dollar subsidy, but stipulated the use of iron
propeller steamers of 4,000 tons. With their ordered craft unavailable, Pacific Mail chartered the iron
steamers Granada and Colima to fill the gap.
22 City ofTokio went ashore on the coast of Japan on June 24, 1885, and was destroyed by a strong typhoon
before it could be salvaged. She was replaced by the steamer Starbuck, herself wrecked just a few years
later. City of Peking, by contrast, was uniquely long-lived, making over a hundred successful transpacific
round-trip voyages.
23 Later additions included the 345-foot, 3,500-ton City of Sydney, City of Rio de Janeiro, and City of New
York. The last met a cruel fate, running aground on the rocks near Point Bonita in late October 1893 and
declared a total loss.
24 Dorothy Perkins, "Coming to San Francisco by Steamship, 1906-1908," in The Chinese American
Experience: Papers from the Second National Conference on Chinese American Studies, ed. Genny Lim (San
Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1980).
25 Robert Schwendinger, "Investigating Chinese Immigrant Ships and Sailors," in Lim, Chinese American
Experience. Also, Lisa Yun, "Under the Hatches: American Coolie Ships and Nineteenth-Century Narratives
of the Pacific Passage," Amerasia Journal 28, no. 2 (2002): 38-63; and Robert Schwendinger, "Chinese Sailors:
America's Invisible Merchant Marine, 1876-1905," California History (Spring 1978): 58-69.
26 The men were hired in gangs, and worked under Chinese foremen, for white officers. The average per-diem
cost to feed the men was 14 cents, roughly 80 percent less than what it would cost to sustain a comparable
white worker. Pacific Mail Steamship Company, Details of Steamer Expenses, mss., Huntington Library.
171
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
serious racial tension. The region became the scene of violent protests, as Caucasians took
out their frustrations on Asian newcomers. San Francisco's white-dominated labor commu-
nity criticized the Chinese for their "bad moral habits, their low grades of development, their
filth, their vices, their willing status as slaves," and actively called for their removal from the
entire West Coast. 27 The idea was prominent enough in California state politics to become a
plank in political platforms, as when the Labor Party proclaimed that "we find the presence
of the Chinese in our midst as an unmitigated evil, ruinous alike to the people and the state,"
and called for the abolition of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's federal subsidy unless
it rid itself of Chinese sailors. 28 When overtly racist legislation failed to stem or arrest the
tide of Chinese immigration, violent mobs attacked the most visible manifestations of immi-
gration. 29 In July 1877, several thousand rioters burned and sacked Chinese laundries in San
Francisco and set fire to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company docks where immigrants first
landed in America. Eventually, immigration from China effectively ended with the Chinese
Exclusion Act (1882), though clandestine operations continued to funnel some immigrants
to the United States. A detention center at Angel Island further made entrance into American
society difficult if not outright impossible. 30
27 Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), quoting Daily Report, December 3,1885. See, too, Russell
H. Conwell, Why and How: Why the Chinese Emigrate and the Means They Adopt for the Purpose of Reaching
America (Boston: Lee and Shepard Publishers, 1871).
28 Winfield J. Davis, ed., History of Political Conventions in California, 1849-1892 (Sacramento: California
State Library, 1893), 327. See also Robert Schwendinger, "Coolie Trade: The American Connection,"
Oceans (January 1980): 38-44.
29 Robert Schwendinger, "The Fearful Summer of '88: Shipwreck and Exclusion," Ports in the West, (1982), 86-96.
30 See M. Mark Stolarik, ed., Forgotten Doors: The Other Ports of Entry to the United States (Philadelphia:
Balch Institute Press, 1988).
172
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
Pacific Mail
The story of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company is well known. Benefiting like few other
companies from both federal subsidies and the perfect timing of the gold rush, Pacific
Mail realized tremendous profits for investors. It also represented a major shift in the
industrial history of California.
Needing a facility to repair and outfit its vessels, Pacific Mail chose a site on the
deepwater Carquinez Straits in the town of Benicia. Sufficiently far up the delta, Benicia
was free from the overly brackish water that could potentially wreak havoc on wooden
ships, and provided anchorages considerably cheaper than those charged by similar loca-
tions in San Francisco. Savvy real-estate developers and influential local politicos were
successful in getting Pacific Mail to establish their headquarters in that town, and it was
a major employer for some time.
The Pacific Mail facilities represented the first large-scale industrial operations in
California, and indeed, at any location along the Pacific coast of the United States. The
vast complex included a foundry, coaling depot, smithy, and assorted other structures
that the firm used for nearly two decades (1850-1 868). After abandoning the site for
other properties, the complex passed through a succession of owners, with many of the
original structures falling into disrepair. Today, the coaling office and foundry are all that
remain of a once extensive enterprise. Even these are in jeopardy, victimized by years of
neglect and a recent incident of arson. Historic preservationists are currently working
with the owner of the property and the city of Benicia to preserve these buildings so
that the story of Pacific Mail might not be lost to future generations.
While Pacific Mail was instrumental in facilitating immigration from Asia, its true
importance lay in its introduction of regular transpacific service, a venture that garnered
the attention of other shippers. Pacific Mail was not alone for long, as rivals realized the
profit potential from transpacific service. Lines such as the Occidental and Oriental (O&cO),
and a number of Japanese carriers, began challenging the Pacific Mail monopoly, as rates
for first-class passengers destined for Hong Kong plummeted to $125. 31 In 1874, Pacific
Mail announced that it would no longer ship its eastbound rail by freight, but would rather
send its China steamers to Panama, and transship the freight there, via the Panama rail-
road. Railroad magnates led by the "Big Four" — Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Collis
Huntington, and Mark Hopkins — planned a response. Funded by the Big Four, the O&cO
line was the foremost competitor to Pacific Mail, monopolizing West Coast railroad and all
river transport on the tributaries of San Francisco Bay. A subsidiary of the Central Pacific
and Union Pacific Railroads, it sought to leverage Pacific Mail to operate steamers in its
interest, thereby cornering all traffic between Asia and the East Coast of the United States.
31 Robert Barde and Wesley Ueuntun, "Pacific Steerage: Japanese Ships and Asian Mass Migration,"
Pacific Historical Review 73 (2004): 653-60. See also William Wray, Mitsubishi and the N.Y.K., 1870-1914:
Business Strategy in the Japanese Shipping Industry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984); and
Robert D. Turner, The Pacific Empresses: An Illustrated History of the Canadian Pacific Railway's Empress
Liners on the Pacific Ocean (Victoria: Sono Nis Press, 1981). On APL, see JohnNiven, The American
Presidents Line and Its Forebears, 1848-1984: From Paddlewheelers to Containerships (Newark: University
of Delaware Press, 1987).
173
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
Chartered in 1874, it leased its vessels from Great Britain's White Star Line, widely consid-
ered the most advanced for their time. Oceanic, Belgic, and Gaelic (the first generation of
O&cO liners) were revolutionary: at 420 feet long, with 3,000-horsepower four-cylinder
engines (capable of attaining 14 knots) and imbued with opulence that bordered on deca-
dence (including a massive saloon with two fireplaces and a library) the O&cO line set the
standard for transpacific travel. 32 One officer reminisced:
No merchant ship ever sailed the seas that was so embowered in sentiment as
the Oceanic. All the time we had her at San Francisco she was a great favorite of
the travelling public and the people who took interest in ships. She was the first
modern steamer that floated on the waters of the Bay of San Francisco and even
to this day the old mariners speak of her beauty and smart lines. She was just as
much of a clipper-ship as she was a steamer. And, oh my, how that ship could sail! 33
Later Pacific Mail vessels, such as Korea, Siberia, Manchuria, and Mongolia, were
even grander: averaging 13,000 tons, they required a crew of 300. 34 However, O&O's liners
directly threatened Pacific Mail: indeed, though the new competitor had but a three-ship
fleet, the O&cO reputation for speed and punctuality made significant inroads into Pacific
Mail business. O&O's gamble paid off. A mutual agreement with Pacific Mail amounted to
a market sharing arrangement whereby the companies produced an average of thirty-two
roundtrip voyages per year, thereby dominating all traffic between Asia and the East Coast
of the United States for the better part of three decades. 35 A shared depot at the Brannan
Street Wharf transformed Steamboat Point — the name for the general neighborhood
surrounding the O&cO facility — into a key link for connecting San Francisco to Oakland,
to the Orient, and to the commerce of the world by both rail and water freight. It presented
a scene of concentrated business activity concerned with and dependent on moving both
the people and all the things that the fast-growing city needed. From 1866 through 1890,
growth continued, especially after the opening of the Transcontinental Line in 1869, at
about which time warehouse space became vastly more important than manufacturing.
As technology progressed, and the cost of transit declined, the size of the vessels grew
appreciably. City of Peking, a 5,080-ton iron screw steamer built by Pacific Mail in 1874,
made 116 round-trips from San Francisco to Hong Kong; City of New York and City of San
Francisco were similarly employed. By the late 1890s, Pacific Mail modernized its fleet by
building 600-foot steel steamers of 13,638 tons gross, which were the largest vessels yet built
in the United States. However, the increasing size of its ships could not protect Pacific Mail
from competitors even more determined than O&O.
Pacific Mail itself withdrew from transpacific service in 1915, leaving the operation to
32 Oceanic was launched in 1870 at the Belfast yards of Harland and Wolff and had extensive service in the
Atlantic trade. Her younger siblings had been built expressly for the transpacific run.
33 Roy Anderson, White Star (Prescott, Lancashire, England: T. Stephenson and Sons, 1964), 68.
34 Built by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, these four vessels had originally been
built for Pacific Mail. Bought out by Southern Pacific — which had already acquired the Central and
Union Pacific Lines — there was no longer any need for competition with O&O, so the vessels were liqui-
dated. Pacific Mail Steamship Company, Mongolia: Statement of General and Particular Average, 1906,
vol. 2, mss., Huntington Library.
35 John Haskell Kemble, "The Big Four at Sea: The History of the Occidental and Oriental Steamship
Company," Huntington Library Quarterly (April 1940): 339-57.
174
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
the Japanese Toyo Kisen Kaisha and, later, the China Mail Steamship Company. 36 The latter
was particularly popular, especially with the Chinese community, though racism and alle-
gations of unsafe operations and illegal activity plagued its history.
While Pacific Mail was waning, by the mid-1920s, the Dollar Steamship Company
dominated Pacific routes, first operating along the California coast, then between the
West Coast and the Orient, and finally, in 1924, with regular around-the-world service for
cargo and passengers. By 1926, Dollar acquired Pacific Mail and all its holdings. 37 Seven
years later, the acquisitive Dollar added H. F. Alexander's Pacific Steamship Company to
its fold. 38 Subjected to the difficult conditions caused by a surfeit of ships and a lack of busi-
ness caused by high tariff barriers and an isolationist foreign policy, the company ran into
serious financial distress during the early years of the Great Depression. Acquired by the
federal government in 1938, its vessels were renamed exclusively after American presidents
(a process begun in 1922) and the company itself bore the name American President Lines
(later, simply, APL).
While transpacific commerce and trade was the most obvious manifestation of
deepwater commerce, it was by no means the only one. The building of the Panama Canal
shortened the journey between California and European ports dramatically, leading to
an increase in tourist traffic and to a growth in foreign trade with that part of the world.
Thanks to Dollar's around-the-world service, San Francisco became a destination not
just for businessmen and adventure-seekers, but for globe-trotting tourists and vacation-
ing families. Meanwhile, tramp steamers replaced many of the big square-riggers in the
bulk trades until they too were replaced by regularly scheduled liner service between San
Francisco and other ports. In short, whether as a destination, point of origin, or just as
transshipment, San Francisco, within just sixty years, had become the major port of the
eastern Pacific. It was a remarkable transition.
It stands to reason that foreign trade would be greatest not with those nations
across the ocean, but with those who share our common border. Coastal lines linked
San Francisco to the Canadian West Coast, though in numbers that seemed miniscule
by comparison to the southern trade. Lumber and coal were the primary exports from
British Columbia, with manufactured items of all types returning by way of coastal
schooner. Eventually, passengers began filling out this cargo, and it was not long until
the arrival of coastwise passenger service. Trade to Mexico was more lasting. As we have
seen, Pacific Mail steamers routinely stopped at Mexican ports en route to and from San
Francisco to seek fresh provisions, refill their coal bunkers, and take on additional mail or
cargo. Likewise, and beginning in 1852, the Colorado Steam Navigation Company linked
California ports with Arizona via the Sea of Cortes. Operating without benefit of a federal
36 On China Mail, see Robert Eric Barde. Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and
Angel Island (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008).
37 Dollar was able to outmaneuver, through political influence, the management of Pacific Mail (essentially
moribund by this date, owing to its lack of steamers) and was awarded the charter on the passenger liners
that entity had been operating on transpacific runs. (Pacific Mail, picked up by W. R. Grace in 1915, ran
transpacific steamers for another decade after that time. The Dollar Line won this route — as well as a
handful of government-owned liners that Pacific Mail had been running.) Dollar acquired the name,
cheaply, but ignored the lines, preferring to make considerable profits by operating separate companies
that supplied materials and services to the steamship industry.
38 Robert Dollar, One Hundred and Thirty Years of Steam Navigation: A History of the Merchant Ship (San
Francisco: Robert Dollar Company, 1931).
175
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
subsidy, this entity struggled for a quarter century. After railroad service was established
between San Francisco and Yuma in the 1870s, however, the profitability of the sea route
dropped, and the Mexican government found it necessary to offer a subsidy in order to
maintain communication and trade among the Gulf ports. Similar challenges forced that
government to offer subsidies to the aforementioned Pacific Coast Steamship Company to
operate service to San Francisco. Those same forces of overland transportation also forced
Pacific Mail to change its policies, as that firm negotiated an agreement with Mexican
authorities hoping to recoup its losses. As of February 1872, additional passengers could
hop aboard Pacific Mail steamers such as the 1,450 -ton Orizaba, at a variety of Mexican
ports, and take passage to San Francisco for as low as 2,000 pesos (about $40 US). 39
By the late nineteenth century, then, Baja became increasingly tied to her northern
neighbor, thanks to several navigation companies that the Mexican government subsidized
in order to link the peninsula with the mainland by sea and help build the territory's econ-
omy through trade with American territories. These subsidies covered certain routes and
thus ensured the transportation of the region's goods and passengers; a number of compa-
nies took advantage of this offer of a guaranteed income to establish navigation routes
stretching south from San Francisco and San Diego to Mexican ports on the Pacific and the
Gulf of California, in some cases extending their reach to Central America. 40
The commodities that circulated through this system support the contention that
San Francisco had become both an entrepot with an enormous reach and a major player
in international trade. Mexican-bound vessels brought cargoes of German glass, toys,
and musical instruments, French perfumes and pharmaceuticals, English furniture, and
other luxury items that had earlier made their way to San Francisco. On the return north,
they carried commodities vital to the industrialized activities that marked Victorian San
Francisco: silver, pearl oyster shells and pearls, orchilla plants for making fabric dye, copper,
and other metals and a wide variety of agricultural goods, including damiana (a native plant
used for making tea and liquor), cascalote (a tree bark used for tanning leather), and occa-
sionally fruit, wine, and panocha (a sugar cane used as a sweetener). 41
California Maritime Academy
The professionalization of maritime education in the United States began in the 1870s
with the establishment of maritime academies in New York and Pennsylvania. On the
West Coast, this commenced with the creation of the California Nautical School (CNS)
in 1929. The mission of the school was "to give practical and theoretical instruction in
navigation, seamanship, steam engines, gas engines, and electricity in order to prepare
young men for service as officers in the American merchant marine." First located in
Tiburon, the CNS trained officers for the US Merchant Marine, granting licenses in both
Marine Engineering and Marine Transportation. Courses of study typically lasted three
years. In addition to standard classroom courses, matriculants gained valuable shipboard
39 Karen Jenks, "California Littoral: The Pacific Mail Steamship Company and the Remaking of Coastal
California, 1830-1900" (PhD diss., University of California, Irvine, 2010).
40 KarinaBusto-Ibarra, "Maritime Trade between the Californias in the Late 19 lh Century," Mains'l Haul: A
Journal of Pacific Maritime History 35, no. 4 (1999): 36-49.
41 Newbern's cargo manifest is telling: during summer and fall 1881, she carried 1,675 containers of orchilla,
weighing 326,340 pound, from Bahia Magdalena to Rodgers, Meyers, and Company of San Francisco.
Busto-Ibarra, "Maritime Trade," 44.
176
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
experience aboard the school's various training ships, cruising to ports across the globe.
In 1939, the school was renamed the California Maritime Academy (CMA), and the
following year, graduates earned a bachelor of science degree to accompany the US
Coast Guard licenses that marked the culmination of their studies.
During the Second World War, the campus was relocated to San Francisco, and an
accelerated program meant the prescribed course of study could be completed in as little
as eighteen months. Eleven graduates lost their lives serving as Merchant Mariners during
the war, and countless others served valorously, living up to the schools motto "to work or
to fight, we are ready." In the postwar years, the school returned to its three-year course
of study and found another new home. In 1946, the campus relocated to Morrow Cove,
a bucolic location in South Vallejo adjoining the Carquinez Straits. By 1973, CMA had
become the first maritime academy to admit women (graduating three in 1976), maturing
to a four-year degree path and gaining regional and national accreditation.
Cal Maritime became part of the California State University system in 1995, and
now offers seven baccalaureates and one master's degree. Approximately eight hundred
students currently pursue courses of study that include such fields as Maritime Policy and
International Business and Logistics, in addition to the traditional backbone of maritime
transportation paths. Students continue to sail and train aboard the Training Ship Golden
Bear, and alumni from the institution are plentiful in today's global maritime industry.
This trade was important to the economic development and integration of Baja
California, since residents of the barren and geographically isolated territory depended
on the mainland for many necessities. Unlike the Mexican mainland, connected by rail-
ways with American markets, Baja California depended solely on maritime transportation
to facilitate its development, enabling the territory to participate in international trade by
exporting its diverse raw materials and contributing significantly to the economic growth
of its main trading partner, San Francisco. The size and scope of this maritime activity,
coupled with the needs of the transpacific trade, required facilities and a labor force capable
of supplying this demand. The following chapter traces the development of maritime indus-
tries such as shipbuilding in the San Francisco Bay region, and the development of maritime
labor unions in the area.
177
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
Depiction of the packet ship Tropic Bird by
well-known maritime artist Charles Robert
Patterson. The island traders extended
for another generation the tradition of
wooden shipbuilding in the United States
and captured the public imagination for
speed under sail. The 347-ton three-masted
barkentine Tropic Bird was built by John
Kruse for Thomas McDonald and was lost
in 1907 at Perula Bay, Mexico.
Courtesy Robert Lloyd Webb, Sailor-Painter:
The Uncommon Life of Charles Robert
Patterson (Flat Hammock Press, 2005).
The 267-ton brigantine John D. Spreckels was
built by Matthew Turner for the inter-island
trade, ferrying general cargo and fine freight
to Honolulu on a regular schedule. Like many
Turner products, Spreckels was built for
speed, as the studding sails can attest.
^T^E ; \
m^
Mrl^HI PY)P^( r
m
1 Mu
■ -•'
Blr>1 r-.-;, s?:'
^^ r ..
-
!■■ ^v,
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park, J.W. Proctor Collection.
J7.1556ln.
With the advent of transpacific steam, came
increased numbers of Asian immigrants.
Here, an artist captures a scene involving
a group of Chinese immigrants aboard the
steamship Alaska.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park. J10. 20220
178
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
Coal yard and tramway on
the Pacific Mail Steamship
Company Wharf, 1871.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.
A12.18, 315 PSL.
Pacific Mail steamers Colorado
and Senator. The paddlewheel
steamer Senator had been
built in 1846 for the run from
Bangor to Boston, but was
transferred to the West Coast
at the onset of the gold rush,
where she served as both river
steamer and in coastal opera-
tions. This partial panorama,
taken in 1871, shows the Pacific
Mail Docks and Oriental
Warehouse.
I i J '■
' ja i
1 1 l.LLifi » 1 1
II . v2sff> x "
^•^^Br'* ^^J^^&t ^,"™ it^~
i^Si
^K._*fl-v ,^
If
^j^Xk-^"^'^ JHIB
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.
Watkins Carleton, photographer.A12.18, 322n.
179
Deepwater Sailing: Immigrants, Passengers, and Foreign Trade
Original stereopticon (post-1867) image
of the Pacific Mail transpacific side-wheel
steamer SS Japan at the California Drydock
in Hunter's Point, San Francisco for
maintenance.
Courtesy Stephen J. and Jeremy W. Potash
Collection. Copyright Stephen J. and
Jeremy W. Potash (Steve@Potashco.com).
Original hand-colored litho-
graph, ca. 1867, of the wooden
side-wheeler SS China, built
by William Webb of New York
for Pacific Mail's pioneering
steamer service between San
Francisco, Japan, and China.
-
1
fe^^k. --
i>ari»g j^gtM
Courtesy Stephen J. and Jeremy W. Potash Collection. Copyright
Stephen J. and Jeremy W. Potash (Steve@Potashco.com).
180
CHAPTER 11
Shipyards and Labor Issues
Shipbuilding and various boat repair operations were ongoing in the area now known as the
San Francisco Bay since humans in the region first went to sea. Indigenous persons construct-
ed their tule balsas at virtually any point along the shoreline, and by the 1830s, as we have
seen, William Richardson operated a small launch and repair facility in Yerba Buena cove. 1
As with so many other aspects of Bay Area maritime history, the gold rush transformed ship-
building operations in the region, and shortly after that event, the greater San Francisco Bay
area became one of the most important ship construction and repair facilities in the world.
During the twentieth century, external events — such as a pair of world wars and the awarding
of government contracts to local shipyards — even further converted the greater San Francisco
Bay Area into one of the most productive shipbuilding facilities the world had ever seen. With
the rise of ship-related industry, issues germane to maritime labor converted the region into a
hotbed of union activism. It seems as if these two processes cannot be understood unless stud-
ied in close juxtaposition: as San Francisco modernized and industrialized, it became home to
several notable labor unions. This chapter traces the development and evolution of both the
shipbuilding industry and maritime labor organizations in the Bay Area.
During San Francisco's nascence, the building of bay and coasting vessels was accom-
plished with relatively little capital outlay. At this point, all that was required of a shipyard
was a sliver of flat land big enough to set up the vessel and proximity to water. All along
the waterfront, a plethora of shipyards, ship-breaking operations, and ship repair facili-
ties sprang up in the wake of the gold rush. By the late 1850s to mid-1860s, the yards of
William Boole, Domingo Marcucci, Henry Owens, Patrick Henry Tiernan, and John G.
North, among others, began producing side-wheel and stern-wheel steamboats along the
Embarcadero from South Beach to the place that became known as "Steamboat Point." 2
This was a new venture: as late as Septemberl848, there was no real activity south of Rincon
Point. Until the maritime industrial development of the area, the waterfront in this part
of the Bay was relatively isolated, with Rincon Hill and its fashionable residences being an
exclusive enclave of the wealthy. A visiting sailor, Captain Timothy Harrison of the steamer
Belfast, reported that the beaches here "offered a prominent and most beautiful view of the
city and the harbor It was a quite fashionable Sunday destination . . . many races were run
on the beach at low water by the owners of mustang ponies." 3 None could predict that the
1 "Evolution of Shipping and Ship-Building in California," Northwest Magazine (January 1895): 5-16.
2 On this phenomenon, see William H. Thiesen, Industrializing American Shipbuilding: The Transformation
of Ship Design and Construction, 1820-1920 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006).
3 Roger Olmsted, San Francisco Waterfront: Report on Historical Cultural Resources for the North Shore
and Channel Outfalls Consolidation Projects. (Prepared for the San Francisco Wastewater Management
Program, 1977), 164.
181
Shipyards and Labor Issues
bucolic region would soon transform into a booming industrial locale. 4
The low-water mark that made the area conducive to horse races also made it ideal for
shipbuilding and ship repair, since the slope of the shoreline below high-tide mark made
vessel access easier there than at any other point in the city. By 1851, marine operations had
gotten underway. On June 14 that year, Henry B. Tichenor purchased a lot at the corner of
Townsend and 2 nd Street for $2,700, opening a marine railway on the spot that summer. It
was a prudent decision: two years later, an adjacent lot sold for $40,000 as entrepreneurs
sought to take advantage of the neighborhood's attributes. In his sixteen years in opera-
tion, Tichenor serviced over 1,000 vessels, his first being the brig Sidi Hammet, who had her
bottom coppered just weeks after Tichenor acquired his property. Tichenor was not alone:
a floating dry dock was competing with Tichenor's operation within four years, and a great
stone graving dock was completed at nearby Hunter's Point in 1868. 5
As documented by Roger and Nancy Olmsted, the entire waterfront from beyond
Mission Bay to the region approaching the current Ferry Building was a mixture of ship-
yards, shipbreaking facilities, and other such enterprises that "resembled so much ghastly
marine debris." 6 It was a scene of concentrated business activity, concerned with, and depen-
dent upon, the movement of both the people and the things that a fast-growing city needed.
The Pacific Rolling Mills (1866), San Francisco Gas and Electric Company (1872), California
Sugar Refining Company (1881), Union Iron Works (1883, after relocating from First and
Mission Streets), and the Arctic Oil Works of the Pacific Steam Whaling Company (1884)
were all found here, each with private wharves and extensive warehousing operations to
facilitate their business.
The Folger and Tubbs Cordage Company (founded just south of Potrero Point in 1856
by Captain William Folger, patriarch of the coffee clan, and Massachusetts transplants
Alfred and Hiram Tubbs) produced the first rope manufactured in the United States outside
New England, and featured a 1,400-foot-long ropewalk that extended into the Bay. Smaller
operations, usually employing a dozen or so workers, were scattered along the waterfront,
churning out the ubiquitous scow schooners, lumber droghers, and assorted craft that made
up the Bay Area armada. It was materials, craftsmen, and above all else a master carpenter,
that constituted a shipyard. 7
Workboats were not the only kind of vessel under production along the waterfront.
John Twigg's Boatbuilding Shop employed builders and designers of high-class sailing and
power yachts, and G. W. Kneass specialized in building elegant boats and launches from his
facility located just north of the Union Iron Works. Larger operations catered to deepwater
4 On the transformation of the region, see Mary Pratzellis, Adrian Praetzellis et al., Tar Flat, Rincon Hill,
and the Shore of Mission Bay (Rohnert Park, CA: Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma State University,
1993). See also Nancy Olmsted, Vanished Waters: A History of San Francisco's Mission Bay (San Francisco:
Mission Creek Conservancy, 1986); Albert Shumate, South Park and Rincon Hill: San Francisco's Fashionable
Neighborhood (Sausalito: Windgate Press, 1988); and Robert Courland, The Old North Waterfront: The
History and Rebirth of a San Francisco Neighborhood (San Francisco: Ron Kaufman Companies, 2004).
5 Daily Alta California, December 31, 1855.
6 James Allan, "'So many ghastly piles of marine debris': Discovery of the Whaling Ship Candace in
Downtown San Francisco" Proceedings of the Society for California Archaeology 20 (2007): 9-14,
http://www.scahome.org/publications/proceedings/Proceedings.20Allan.pdf.
7 See Diane Cooper, "From Small Ways to Big Business: The Growth of the Wooden Ship Construction and
Waterborne Industries along the United States' Pacific Coast, 1875-1900" (master's thesis, East Carolina
University, 1995).
182
Shipyards and Labor Issues
and coasting craft, were at the forefront of naval architecture, and employed skilled crafts-
men. Among the most notable of these yards were those owned and operated by Schultze,
Robertson, and Schultze; John and James Dickie (ably assisted by John's son, David, a naval
architect who began work in the years just prior to World War I); Alexander Hay; C. A.
Castner (specializing in spars); and George Boole and Angus Beaton. 8 The latter catered to
the lumber trade, and it was said that their contribution of steam schooners to that industry
revolutionized the market. The close proximity of some seventeen lumber yards (the larg-
est of which handling upwards of seven million board feet of lumber) and mills along the
waterfront meant these facilities had ample customers. Planing mills, cigar-box manufactur-
ers, furniture factories, and cooperages fleshed out the neighborhood. It was a city literally
and economically built on wood: plank sidewalks wore out quickly, and there was an ever-
increasing demand for wood and lumber in the burgeoning town. It was also a city that was
apparently hell-bent on environmental destruction: Channel Creek, which allowed lumber
schooners and other craft easy access to the warehouses and mills of the neighborhood, was
soon littered with debris. Fred Klebingat, a sailor who frequented San Francisco in the early
twentieth century described the scene 9 :
The creek was an open sewer, and it was thick as soup ... a cesspool that emitted
offensive odors, especially at low tide. Gas bubbles broke the surface. We knew
what the contents of that creek were They said that if you fell overboard you
would not last more than two minutes ... it could turn white lead paint black in
one night ... if you took two gulps of that stuff it would be the end of you ... it was
universally known up and down the coast by sailors as "shit creek." As bad as the
stench as, it was the busiest place on the San Francisco waterfront. 10
San Francisco was not the only Bay Area community that featured impressive shipyards.
Benicia, in particular, had a long tradition of wooden shipbuilding. As early as 1850, the Pacific
Mail Steamship Company began building wharves and machine ships for the maintenance
of their steamers in that town, and this establishment represented the first large industrial
enterprise in the state. The plant was eventually sold and the company ceased to use Benicia
as a repair and supply base, but greater things awaited that community. Matthew Turner,
an Ohioan who had operated a shipyard in San Francisco since 1868, relocated to Benicia
and operated his facility there from 1883 to 1903. During his career, Turner launched more
wooden vessels than any other individual builder in North America, with most of the 228 craft
fabricated at his Benicia yard. 11 Turner was not alone, and his colleagues were prodigious: by
1880, shipbuilding and repairs at California yards were valued at $1.8 million, just behind the
8 In later years, several of these yards would relocate to Oakland and Alameda. The case of the Stone
family is illustrative: William I, Stone had established a yard in India Basin in the 1850s. His son, William
F. "Frank" Stone set up first in Tiburon, then later at Harbor View in San Francisco and ultimately in
Oakland. Lester Stone then relocated the family firm to Alameda.
9 Klebingat first arrived in San Francisco in 1909 at age twenty, sailing aboard S. N. Castle. His reminis-
cences can be found in Captain Fred Klebingat, Memories of the Old City-Front, Historic Documents
Collection, J. Porter Shaw Library, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.
10 Cited in Olmsted, San Francisco Waterfront, 125. Not much had changed by the mid-twentieth century,
when estimates placed the volume of untreated (raw) sewage entering the bay in 1950 at a staggering 250
million gallons per day.
11 On Turner, see Alan Thewlis, "Matthew Turner: Builder of Wooden Boats," Mains'l Haul: A Journal of
Pacific Maritime History 28, no. 3 (1992): 16-20.
183
Shipyards and Labor Issues
traditional American centers of Maine and southern New England, and more than six times
as great as that contributed by Washington and Oregon combined. 12 Most, however, were
small facilities specializing in small craft, making their vessels out of the cheap and locally
available wood culled from forests in the Pacific Northwest.
Matthew Turner
Among the most notable of Bay Area shipwrights was Matthew Turner. Born in Geneva,
Ohio, in 1825, he learned from his father how to build small fishing vessels used along Lake
Erie. By1850, he headed to California, where he made a considerable sum in the Sierra
goldfields. Returning to the East Coast, he purchased a schooner, Toronto, and sailed back
to San Francisco. Here, he hauled lumber from Mendocino to the city, operating this service
with a partner, Captain Richard Rundle. In time, the pair added a second schooner, Louis
Perry, and diversified their operations. By 1860, Turner owned a brig, Temandra, that shut-
tled supplies to Siberia (during one of her runs she stumbled upon a rich codfishery, which
Turner later served) and the ship Porpoise, which did the same in Tahiti.
Hoping to expand his operations, but having a difficult time finding vessels that
met his exacting specifications, Turner began building his own. In 1868, he acquired
property in Humboldt County. The product of this venture, the Eureka-built Nautilus,
was so swift that Turner built more ships, eventually opening a commercial shipyard on
San Francisco's Channel Street. It was a marked success. By 1883, business had expand-
ed to such a degree that Turner decided to relocate to the deepwater port of Benicia,
located on the Carquinez Straits.
The site was well-chosen. Working with his brother Horatio and a third partner,
John Eckley (his original business partner, Rundle, had died, and Turner — who lost his
wife in childbirth — eventually married his Rundle's widow),Tumer built a yard, blasting
through solid rock to fashion the ways, deemed the largest on the West Coast. With
over thirty employees, Turner fulfilled many contracts and his craft were noted for their
speed: in 1901, the 1,091-ton Amaranth set the standard, covering the Shanghai to
Astoria run in 23 days. William C. Irwin made the San Francisco to Maui run in 8 days,
17 hours. Galilee, likewise, once made the San Francisco to Papeete run in 22 days,
and average only slighter longer (28 days) over the course of its career. Galilee's stern is
included in the SFMNHP collection, exhibited on the east wall of Fort Mason Center. The
bow of that craft is located in Benicia, preserved by the Benicia Historical Society.
Turner's affinity for speed was not limited to commercial craft. A charter member
of the San Francisco Yacht Club, he built boats for many colleagues. Among the most
notable was the schooner yacht Lurline, built for the Spreckels family, which won three
of the first four transpacific races that linked Southern California and Honolulu.
Turner retired in 1906 and died three years later at his home in Berkeley; in his
33-year career, he produced 228 vessels, more than any other American shipwright. His
Benicia shipyard, managed by James Robertson until it was dissolved in 1918, produces
169 of these. Turner's legacy is commemorated by a small park and memorial in Benicia
and by an elementary school bearing his name in that town. At low tide, the remnants
of this facility, including stone ways and the rotting hulk of the whaler Stambohl used
12 Henry Hall, Report on the Shipbuilding Industry in the United States (Washington, DC: GPO, 1884).
184
Shipyards and Labor Issues
as a work platform during the yard's heyday, are still visible. The site is listed as State
Historical Landmark No. 973.
Larger vessels, particularly those with iron or steel hulls, were not built in San
Francisco Bay until nearly forty years after the gold rush. In 1880, the Union Iron Works
(UIW) began to make definite plans to build steel ships. 13 Founded by Belfast-born Peter
Donahue in 1849, the UIW began as a blacksmith shop, producing machinery for various
gold-and silver-mining ventures. 14 As mining declined, the firm, now managed by Donahue's
two sons, diversified their operations, venturing into new fields such as railway engines. 15
By 1883, the brothers sold the firm to Irving Murray Scott, who soon opened a plant at
Portrero Point, establishing the first shipyard capable of producing metal ships anywhere
in the Pacific Basin. 16 In the process, the facility became the first large, modern shipyard on
the Pacific Coast, quickly becoming the largest single employer in San Francisco and cover-
ing twenty-five acres with 1,300 employed men. The first steel ships in the Pacific Coast (the
first was the 800-ton steam collier Arago, launched in April 1885, and designed for service
between Coos Bay, Oregon, and San Francisco) launched from this yard, as UIW soon
rivaled established East Coast and European facilities. 17 The transformation was not lost on
contemporary observers. One correspondent noted the change:
Even as late as twenty years ago, the building of large, ocean-going steamers
on the Pacific Coast was not seriously regarded by the world east of the Rocky
Mountains. Today there are no better built ships anywhere than those construct-
ed right in San Francisco. The Union, Risdon and Fulton Iron Works, Boole's
shipyard, Dickie's yard, and a few lesser ones, are capable of turning out as splen-
did vessels as any of the boasted yards of England, Scotland, Germany or the
Eastern United States. San Franciscans always knew of the capabilities of their
local shipyards. 18
In addition to building ships for commercial use, the UIW was a major producer of
ships for the expanding steel navy 19 Bethlehem Steel purchased the yard in 1905, and, as the
13 Joseph Aaron Blum, "San Francisco Iron: The Industry and its Workers, from the Gold Rush to the Turn
of the Century" (master's thesis, San Francisco State University, 1988).
14 There was nothing unusual in the Donahue's immigrant status. Other San Francisco shipbuilders, such
as the Dickie Brothers (Scotland), Domingo Marcucci (Italy), John North (Norway), and Henry Owens
(Wales), shared this trait.
15 On Donahue, see Richard H. Dillon, Iron Men: Peter, James, and Michael Donahue (Point Richmond, C A:
Candela Press, 1984). See also Hubert Howe Bancroft, "History of the Life of Peter Donahue," 1890, oral
history transcript, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
16 See "Mr. Irving M. Scott: Pioneer Ship-Builder of the Pacific Coast," Pioneer 8, no. 11 (November 15,
1898): 159. Scott was ably assisted by his superintendent, George Dickie.
17 Arago would gain notoriety in a landmark 1893 US Supreme Court decision, wherein the justices deter-
mined that merchant seamen were wards of the state, who had signed away their freedoms upon joining
a ship, and who were therefore not covered by Thirteenth Amendment protections against involuntary
servitude. That decision stood until the Seaman's Act of 1915 was signed into law.
18 San Francisco News Letter, July 21, 1906.
19 Among the notable craft delivered to the US Navy from this yard was Olympia, which served as Admiral
Dewey's flagship during the Battle of Manila Bay.
185
Shipyards and Labor Issues
Bethlehem Steel Corporation, Ship Building Division, continued to build ships through two
world wars and into the 1960s. 20 A comparable facility, the Alameda Works, had ways for six
ships and a facility ranging over seventy-five acres, making it one of the largest such opera-
tions in the nation. Though ship production ceased in 1923, it continued as a repair yard,
and was a major component to the region's economy during World War II, though by 1956
it had closed for good. The UIW and its subsequent iterations, now managed by the Port
of San Francisco, continues today as the only repair yard for large vessels in San Francisco,
representing the oldest continuously operated shipyard in the United States. 21 The first
industries in California, then, were maritime-related: the depot and shops of the Pacific Mail
Steamship Company, the Union Iron Works, and smaller foundries in the surrounding area
could all trace their origins to maritime affairs. 22
Irving Scott and the Union Iron Works
When Peter Donahue decided to sell the Union Iron Works (UIW) to concentrate
his time and energies on building San Francisco's first gasworks (the predecessor of
today's Pacific Gas and Electric, PG&E), he had just the man in mind. Based on his reputa-
tion as a talented and efficient engineer, Irving Scott was recruited by Donahue to lead
the UIW. Upon acquiring the company, Scott placed his brother Henry Tiffany Scott in
charge of the financial operations while he toured the nation looking for new ideas and
investment opportunities. Under the Scotts' tutelage, UIW produced much of the heavy
mining equipment used in the West, but the brothers realized that this was a short-lived
phenomenon. Something more lasting was needed.
In 1883, UIW moved from South-of-Market to Potrero Point, producing steel and
iron ships. This state-of-the-art facility was maximally efficient and highly self-sufficient.
Scott started a recruitment program to attract skilled shipwrights from Scotland, and began
an apprenticeship program to teach local youths the skills for the rapidly developing indus-
try. The high cost of importing materials to California required the yard to produce its own
steel, or acquire it from neighbors such as the Pacific Rolling Mills. This was done, and just
two years after opening, Arago slid down the ways, the first steel ship built in the Pacific.
Through assiduous lobbying efforts, Scott landed government contracts, convinc-
ing legislators that West Coast shipyards could produce steel-hulled ships as efficiently as
their East Coast competitors. Among the craft that UIW produced was the USS Olympia,
flagship of Admiral Dewey at the Battle of Manila Bay, as well as battleships Oregon,
Ohio, and California.
Bethlehem Steel purchased UIW in 1905. The following year, the yard sustained
substantial damage from the great San Francisco earthquake: a hydraulic dry dock was
damaged beyond repair, and considerable assets were lost as a result of the calamity. It
was, however, not the end of the venerable company. Under the leadership of Charles
Schwab, Bethlehem Steel grew strong in the wake of the earthquake, expanding its
20 "History of Bethlehem's San Francisco Yard," Pacific Marine Review 46 (October 1949): 27-34.
21 SFMNHP holds extensive records, photographs, and artifacts from the company.
22 Examples include San Francisco's Risdon Iron Works (which, like the Union Foundry, had begun by
building machinery for mining and industrial uses) and the Continental Iron Works in Vallejo. See Dean
Mawdsley, Steel Ships and Iron Pipe: Western Pipe and Steel Company of California — The Company, the
Yard, the Ships (San Francisco: Friends of the San Francisco Maritime Museum Library, 2002).
186
Shipyards and Labor Issues
operations and buying up dry docks at Hunter's Point, shipyards in Alameda, and the
competing Risdon Iron Works. During the World War I, the Bethlehem facility averaged
three destroyers per month, turning out 66 of these craft, and 18 submarines. Despite
setbacks caused by the Great Depression, the facility was one of the most productive
shipyards in the country on the eve of World War II.
During that conflict, the yard employed nearly 10,000 workers employed in three
daily shifts. This round-the-clock operation allowed for the construction of 72 vessels and
repairs to another 2,500. In one amazing episode, the destroyer escort Fieberling launched
after just 24 days. The return of peace meant slowed production schedules and declin-
ing contracts, but the yard persevered. In the two decades following war's end, the yard
turned out another 17 vessels, delivering its last ship, USS Bradley, in May1965.
While the facility no longer produces ships or other heavy equipment, the Potrero
site — now managed by BAE Systems — continues to repair ships and is one of the larg-
est repair facilities on the West Coast. A large number of historically and architecturally
significant structures remain intact, if unused, on the site.
The Union Iron Works facility was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places
in 201 1as a Historic District and the Port of San Francisco has issued a request to devel-
opers interested in rehabilitating the site.
While the demands of the local economy dictated sufficient shipbuilding and repair
facilities in San Francisco, these industries received a tremendous stimulus due to exter-
nal forces. The Klondike gold rush and the nearly simultaneous demands of the Spanish-
American War set off a small shipping boom, and many lumber schooners, Downeasters,
and assorted other craft made their way north, in a scene reminiscent of the great
California gold rush. 23 These events had a ripple effect: as older craft shuttled to far-off
locales, San Francisco-based yards churned out their replacements. The demands of World
War I generated tremendous interest and activity in Bay Area shipyards. Just ten days after
the United States declared war on the Central Powers, the United States Shipping Board
(replicated during World War II as the War Shipping Board) established the Emergency
Fleet Corporation to "acquire, maintain, and operate merchant ships so as to meet the
demands of national defense and of domestic and foreign commerce." 24 Massive infusions
of capital and a highly motivated workforce moved to the region to take employment in one
of the many yards with government contracts. 25
During that conflict, the federal Emergency Fleet Corporation, with a budget estimat-
ed at twice the value of the entire world's merchant marine fleet, established new shipyards
and increased construction. The goal was ambitious: estimates put thewar effort's shipping
requirements at six to ten million deadweight tons. When war was declared, the United
States had but 300,000 tons at its disposal. Hundreds of steel vessels were requisitioned,
23 B. Franklin Cooling, Grey Steel and Blue Water: The Formative Years of America's Military Industrial
Complex, 1881-1917 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1979). The Klondike and war shipping booms reversed
a shipping depression that had gripped the entire Pacific coast since the early 1880s.
24 Noel H. Pugach, "American Shipping Promoters and the Shipping Crisis of 1914-1916: The Pacific and
Eastern Steamship Company," American Neptune 35 (1975): 166-82.
25 On the efforts of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, consult Robert Kilmarx, ed., America's Maritime Legacy:
A History of the United States Merchant Marine and Shipbuilding Industry (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979).
187
Shipyards and Labor Issues
and the government took over orders that domestic yards had promised to foreign clients.
Several new yards were created, and the government managed dozens more. Still, the
results were disappointing, with new vessel construction running as long as fourteen
months from keel laying to launching. By October 1918, fewer than 400 vessels had entered
service, and by war's end, only 44 percent of the called-for ships had been completed. 26
While the national effort was disappointing (the massive facility at Hog Island, located on
the Delaware River just outside Philadelphia failed to launch a single vessel before the armi-
stice), local production was impressive.
Bay Area yards, including such new ventures as Oakland's Hanlon Dry Dock and
Shipbuilding Company, and Alameda's Barnes and Tibbetts (later General Engineering
Company), as well as expanded operations like Moore and Scott (Oakland) and James
Robertson (Benicia), were especially productive, producing over a quarter of all wartime
merchant ship deliveries. All told, from 1914 to 1918, the western yards built 759 vessels
totaling 5,249,150 deadweight tons. Some of the yards reintroduced old techniques, focus-
ing on wooden-ship construction, while others employed novel strategies, such as concrete
ships, a phenomenon that did not necessarily disappear with the return of peace. 27 Military
vessels were completed with astonishing speed. Mare Island Naval Shipyard produced
countless craft for the military, including destroyer USS Ward, launched in just 17.5 days. 28
Despite these successes, the shipbuilding industry was in many ways underperforming:
many of the orders were placed with nearly formed yards that proved unable to fulfill
their contracts on time and only fifty-five of the wooden craft were completed before the
armistice. 29 The federal government, likewise, voided many contracts, leaving shipbuilders
bankrupt and angry.
The return of peace left a glutted market. Despite the seeming failures of the
Emergency Fleet Corporation, the tonnage engaged in the US Merchant Marine more
than doubled between 1916 and 1922. Between 1922 and 1928, not a single new ship
for world commerce was built in the United States, and in the decade before 1940,
America's shipyards launched only twenty-three ships. Many famous and long-lived
shipyards went out of business during these years. Political developments follow-
ing the war favored a return to isolationism and an "American First" focus to federal
policy. In response to these political developments and to the fact that the large fleet
of government-owned ships was expensive to maintain and operate, many ships were
sold to private companies both in the United States and abroad. The Dollar Steamship
Company chartered and eventually purchased several of the vessels, bolstering its fleet
and assuming an increasingly important position in the transpacific steamship business
after the conclusion of hostilities. Vessels designed as troop transports were retrofit to
26 See, Richard Sicotte, "Economic Crisis and Political Response: The Political Economy of the Shipping
Act of 1916," Journal of Economic History 59, no. 4 (December 1999): 861-84.
27 See Robert Eberhardt, "Concrete Shipbuilding in San Diego, 1918-1920," Journal of San Diego History
41, no. 2 (Spring 1995), http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/95spring/shipbuilding.htm; and Jean
Haviland, "American Concrete Steamers of the First and Second World Wars," American Neptune 22
(1962): 157-83.
28 Ward would gain additional fame by being the first US ship to employ its guns against the Japanese in
World War II, when it engaged and sank a Japanese midget submarine in the Pearl Harbor defensive zone
immediately prior to the aerial attack on the US Pacific fleet on December 7, 1941.
29 On WWI shipbuilding operations in the Bay, see Louis Hough, A Fleet to be Forgotten: The Wooden
Freighters of World War One (San Francisco: San Francisco Maritime History Press, 2009).
188
Shipyards and Labor Issues
accommodate passengers seeking luxury accommodations to and from the Orient. 30
The myopic nature of extreme isolationism soon became apparent. Hostilities in
Europe and elsewhere in the mid-1930s changed American mercantile policy dramatically.
In 1936, Congress passed the Merchant Marine Act, "a legislative landmark of unrivaled
importance in the history of US maritime policy" 31 Recalling that four-fifths of the tonnage
authorized in World War I arrived after that conflict was concluded, President Franklin
D. Roosevelt called for "a merchant marine sufficient to carry a substantial portion of the
waterborne export and import foreign commerce of the United States on the best equipped,
safest and most suitable type of vessels owned, operated and constructed by citizens of the
United States, manned with a trained personnel and capable of serving as a naval and mili-
tary auxiliary in time of war or national emergency." 32
The Merchant Marine Act formally recognized the importance of the maritime
industry to the commercial prosperity and military security of the United States. Under
various iterations of this law, American shipbuilders contracted to build anywhere
from fifty to two hundred vessels per year. The act also acknowledged the need for
federal assistance to keep the industry viable in the face of international competi-
tion. Following passage of the legislation, shipbuilding subsidies were established, and
government-initiated ship production commenced in 1939, employing thousands at ten
West Coast shipyards alone. 33
The events that made the United States a combatant in World War II led to a
heightened pace of activity in West Coast shipyards. Between 1939 and 1945, the 10
West Coast shipyards grew to 26, as the number of ways increased from 25 to 163. The
Bay Area in particular had several notable things going for it: a history of shipbuilding
operations, proximity to the Pacific theatre, a large workforce, and undeveloped water-
front real estate combined to form a perfect equation for shipbuilding in the region.
Nationwide, over 600,000 people were employed at close to 70 shipbuilding facilities: in
the five years after 1940, American shipyards produced 4,600 vessels. West Coast yards
were especially productive, combining to build 2,257 vessels, amounting to 6.3 million
tons, or 45 percent of the total merchant ship tonnage (and 27 percent of all warship
tonnage), in the United States during WWII. 34 To take but one example, by the end of
1945, Marinship Corporation (founded in Sausalito in 1942) and its workforce of 22,000
had delivered 93 vessels — mainly tankers but also assorted craft that included Liberty
ships and a large number of invasion barges — to the Navy and Maritime Commission. 35
30 See Lawrence C. Allin, "Ill-Timed Initiative: The Ship Purchase Act of 1915," American Neptune
(July 1973): 179-98.
31 Andrew Gibson and Arthur Donovan, The Abandoned Ocean: A History of American Maritime Policy
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press), 141.
32 Merchant Marine Act of 1936, http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode46a/usc_sup_05_46_10_27.html.
33 See Michael Lindberg and Daniel Todd, Anglo-American Shipbuilding in World War II: A Geographical
Perspective (Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 2004).
34 A nice visual treatment of this work can be found in Wayne Bonnett, Build Ships!: San Francisco Bay
Wartime Shipbuilding Photographs (Sausalito: Windgate Press, 1999).
35 Charles Wollenberg, Marinship at War: Shipbuilding and Social Change in Wartime Sausalito (Berkeley:
Western Heritage Press, 1990). Among the ships were 62 tankers, 16 oilers, and 15 Liberty cargo carri-
ers. Located in Sausalito 's Richardson Bay, the first vessel to be launched was the eponymous William A.
Richardson. The yard launched one vessel every thirteen days: the tanker Huntington Hills was launched
in just thirty-three days, half the time required for comparable craft.
189
Shipyards and Labor Issues
All told, World War II shipbuilding was perhaps the greatest combined effort of govern-
ment and private industry in the nation's history. 36
As a carryover from World War I, the United States already had a large fleet. It also
had experience with wartime shipbuilding. Nonetheless, the scale of World War II ship-
building efforts reached unprecedented levels, with consequences far beyond the shipyards,
affecting the geographic location of the population and the work experience of minority
and especially women workers. 37 The shipbuilding frenzy of World War II also had a long-
lasting effect on coastal and inland shipping. During the war years, the military demand for
ships meant that domestic trade was shifted to rail and trucking. After the war, these alter-
native modes of transportation came to dominate.
Among the notable individuals responsible for these developments was Henry J.
Kaiser. Scion of a German American family, Kaiser had a background as a general contrac-
tor and soon founded a fledging dynasty. During World War I, his family based their busi-
ness in Vancouver, British Columbia; with the return of peace, anti-German feelings had
abated to a level where the family felt secure in returning to the States. Arriving in the Bay
Area in 1921, Kaiser turned his attention to massive municipal projects. He built roads in
Cuba, levees along the Mississippi River, and dams (such as the Boulder, Bonneville, and
Grand Coulee) throughout the American West. 38 But it was during the national crisis of the
World War II that this visionary and entrepreneur made a lasting mark on American histo-
ry, creating an integrated system of work and living spaces at his shipyards while integrating
a social-service network (including health care and child care) into industrial work ways. 39
Treeless Richmond, with its deepwater access and ample space for warehousing, became a
favored location for building ships and housing, its yards alone employing 100,000 workers.
They were not alone, as an additional 45,000 labored at Mare Island, with 35,000 each at
Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard and at Oakland's Moore Drydock. 40
Although he was a successful industrialist, Kaiser was ignorant of traditional ship-
building techniques; indeed, he had never built a ship before 1941. Unburdened by the
limitations of vision and practices of traditional shipbuilding, Kaiser geared up for volume
production. His ships were built of prefabricated modules, and then assembled in series
construction reminiscent of automobile assembly lines. The shipyards, operating on twen-
ty-four-hour shifts, seven days a week, employed hundreds of thousands. Kaiser provided
optional health care (at fifty cents per weeks, over 92 percent of his workforce opted in —
they would need it, since battlefield casualties trailed home-front injuries until 1943) and
36 Christopher James Tassava, "Launching a Thousand Ships: Entrepreneurs, War Workers, and the State
in American Shipbuilding, 1940-1945" (PhD diss., Northwestern University 2003).
37 See Katherine Archibald, Wartime Shipyard: A Study in Social Disunity (Champaign: University of
Illinois Press, 2006).
38 Mark S. Foster, Henry]. Kaiser: Builder in the American West (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989);
and Albert P. Heiner, Henry]. Kaiser, Empire Builder: An Insider's View (New York: P. Lang, 1989). See
also the hagiographic Albert P. Heiner, Henry]. Kaiser: Western Colossus (New York: Halo Books, 1991).
39 On Kaiser and his impact, see Christopher James Tassava, "Launching a Thousand Ships: Entrepreneurs, War
Workers, and the State in American Shipbuilding, 1940-1945" (PhD diss., Northwestern University 2003). On
his relationship with the federal government, consult Stephen B. Adams, Mr. Kaiser Goes to Washington: The
Rise of a Government Entrepreneur (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
40 Christopher J. Tassava, "Multiples of Six: The Six Companies and West Coast Industrialization, 1930-1945,"
Enterprise and Society 4, no. 1 (2003): 1-27. On Moore Drydock, see Wayne Bonnett and James Moore,
The Story of the Moore Dry Dock Company : A Picture History (Sausalito: Windgate Press, 1994).
190
Shipyards and Labor Issues
child-care programs that cost just seventy cents per day (a major benefit to the veritable
army of single mothers — women composed 27 percent of the shipyard workforce — then
employed).Between 1940 and 1945, a half-million persons made their way across the United
States to take up jobs in Bay Area shipyards, and three times that number filed out through
the Golden Gate en route to the Pacific theatre, along with supplies and equipment to
combat the enemy Kaiser championed a recruitment effort seeking to relocate African
Americans from the rural, agricultural South to the rapidly industrializing Bay Area. Agents
were dispersed with train tickets (humorously referred to as "magic carpets") offering the
promise of a better life. Whereas African Americans composed 3 percent of the Bay Area
workforce in 1942, this more than tripled by war's end. 41
The Kaiser facilities specialized in utilitarian cargo craft, known as Liberty ships,
that Franklin Roosevelt derisively labeled "ugly ducklings," but officially known as EC-1
(Emergency Cargo). Liberty ships were nothing if not prosaic. Produced at eighteen ship-
yards nationwide, they shared common characteristics. All were oil fired, with 2,500-horse-
power reciprocating engines. Measuring 441 feet by 52 feet, they featured a slight
armamentarium that left them ill equipped to outgun the enemy. With a maximum speed of
12 knots, they could not outrun much, either. The goal was to build these ships faster than
the enemy could sink them (by 1942, roughly two-thirds of the approximately 1,800 Allied
craft lost were victims of U-boat attack) and the shipyards responded by churning out 2,751
in just four years of production. The first, appropriately named Patrick Henry, was complet-
ed in 244 days: by war's end, it was not uncommon to launch in less than three weeks. (The
average was 42 days and in one ballyhooed publicity stunt, Robert E. Peary launched after
just 4.5 days). The Richmond facility, with its 4 yards and 27 ways, alone constructed 747
ships; by mid-1943, the United States produced 85 percent of all Allied shipping. There
were, however, some challenges. Brittle designs led to fracture in the icy waters of the North
Atlantic, a problem solved by introducing a faster, larger, and stronger design, the Victory
ship. Five hundred and thirty one of this class were built, playing a vital role in the war and
serving as a crucial link through their roles as troop transports and cargo carriers. 42
Kaiser's method to increase production was to mechanize and de-skill. Years of
training and experience necessary to make a journeyman shipyard worker could not be
condensed into a matter of days or weeks, yet the war would wait for no one. The solution
was to break the complex job of building a ship into the smallest possible components,
train workers to do that specific task, and gain experience through repetition. Large and
small classrooms sprang up in Bay Area shipyards, teaching welding and other crafts.
High-speed electric arc-welding, a skill that could be learned in a month, was used exten-
sively for the first time instead of riveting. In the first year and a half, construction time for
Liberty ships reduced from 105 to 14 days. By the end of the war, Kaiser had built one-third
of the Maritime Commission's vessels and had set the standard for other yards. From 1940
to 1945, American yards launched 4,600 ships: of this number, 1,400 came from Bay Area
yards. For the 1,365 days of the war, this amounted to roughly one ship per day. A country
that had constructed only 1 million tons of merchant shipping in 1941 built more than 17
million tons by 1943. By the war's end in 1945, a workforce of 4 million men and women had
41 See Marilynn S. Johnson, The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996).
42 Peter Elphick, Liberty: The Ships that Won the War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006).
191
Shipyards and Labor Issues
built 5,000 ships. 43 The speed and the scale of the effort still defy comprehension. When
operating at their peak rate of production, America's shipyards were capable of reproducing
the entire world's prewar commercial tonnage in less than three years. 44
As was the case after World War I, the return of peace meant a glut of merchant ships
following World War II. 45 The boom-and-bust cycle of the work engendered great social
disruption, demographic change, and environmental pollution. When the shipyards closed
and the defense contracts dried up, communities from Richmond to Vallejo were left to
pick up the pieces. Unemployment, rising crime rates, and, later, Superfund status threat-
ened to throw those and other communities into a tailspin of poverty and hopelessness.
The dramatic degree to which much of the Bay Area depended on the maritime industry
was seen in the dislocation that came with the closing of local shipyards. Many vessels were
scrapped, sold, or laid up in "mothball fleets" such as the one in Suisun Bay. While some
repair facilities and a few yards (most notably Mare Island Naval Shipyard and NASSCO in
San Diego) have remained in business (the naval facility at Mare Island closing in 1994), for
all intents and purposes, the cost of building ships in the United States became so prohibi-
tive that it was effectively over by the 1960s, ending more than a century of such efforts in
California and the West. 46
As the maritime industry modernized, becoming increasingly subject to the forces of
mechanization, the men and women who made their living by sailing ships or by working in
the maritime milieu also changed. Basically, maritime laborers can be split into three broad
classes: licensed officers, nonlicensed seafarers, and shoreside maritime workers. Fundamental
shifts in the way these individuals viewed themselves and their place in the emerging economies
occurred from the 1880s on, and these new perspectives often manifested in labor activism.
The evolution of maritime labor unions can be seen most clearly along the West Coast
in general, and in San Francisco in particular. Indeed, the world's first permanent sailors'
unions, hardy enough to survive to the present day, were organized in the city. Given the
rich history of the port, this should not be surprising. San Francisco has always been (and
in many ways remains) a maritime town. Census data from the early years of the twentieth
century show that San Francisco was the most maritime of all American cities, counting
more maritime workers than any other municipality, including New York.
Working aboard any vessel was hard and dangerous work. Few would willingly
choose to suffer the indignities of tramping from port to port in creaky vessels for low
wages, or of working in the dangerous lumber trade along the Pacific Coast. Many seafarers
jumped ship upon arrival in San Francisco, leading to the abandoned forest of masts associ-
ated with the gold rush, and to severe labor shortages in the maritime industry for years to
come. To fill out their complement, shipmasters utilized a variety of strategies, most revolv-
ing around nefarious characters known as crimps. Working with boardinghouse masters
43 Frederic Lane, Ships for Victory: A History of Shipbuilding under the United States Maritime Commission in
World War II (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1951).
44 Gibson and Donovan, Abandoned Ocean, 166-67.
45 The standard treatment of the economic impact of the war on California, and of the return to peace, is
Gerald D. Nash, The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second World War (Bloomington,
IN: University of Indiana Press, 1985). See also Gerald D. Nash, World War II and the West: Reshaping the
Economy (Lincoln, NE: University Press of Nebraska, 1990).
46 John Kilgour, The U.S. Merchant Marine: National Maritime Policy and Industrial Relations (Westport,
CT: Praeger Publishers, 1975).
192
Shipyards and Labor Issues
and landlords (or landladies), shipping agents procured sailors for vessels departing the
Golden Gate by means fair and foul. 47
To man the vessels sailing from San Francisco in the wake of the gold rush, a thriving
organization of maritime labor contractors arose. These individuals solved the labor short-
age by providing a necessary service, albeit one that was at the cost of those who provided
the needed supply, the sailors themselves. Beginning in the 1850s and continuing for the
better part of a half century (with reported cases occurring well into the 1930s), boarding-
house keepers and shipping masters made San Francisco the crimping capital of the world.
The waterfront neighborhood known as "The Barbary Coast" soon acquired a globally
recognized bad reputation. One correspondent described it as:
The haunt of the low and the vile of every kind. The petty thief, the house
burglar, the tramp, the whoremonger, lewd women, cutthroats, murderers,
all are found here. Dance halls and concert-saloons, where bleary-eyed men
and faded women drink vile liquor, smoke offensive tobacco, engage in vulgar
conduct, sing obscene songs and say and do everything to heap upon them-
selves more degradation, are numerous. Low gambling houses, thronged with
riot-loving rowdies, in all stages of intoxication, are there. Opium dens, where
heathen Chinese and God-forsaken men and women are sprawled in miscel-
laneous confusion, disgustingly drowsy or completely overcome, are there.
Licentiousness, debauchery, pollution, loathsome disease, insanity from dissi-
pation, misery, poverty, wealth, profanity, blasphemy, and death are there. And
Hell, yawning to receive the putrid mass, is there also. 48
Another, describing the scene on a thoroughfare known to sailors as "Terrific Street"
for the enjoyments one could find there, argued:
Pacific Street is a loud bit of Hell. Three blocks of solid dance halls, there for the
delight of the sailors of the world The life of the floating population lay apart
from the regular life of the city The whole street, for half a dozen blocks,
is literally swarming with the scum of creation. Every land under the sun has
contributed toward making up the crowd of loafers, thieves, gamblers, jayhawk-
ers, and dirty, filthy, degraded, hopeless bummers . . . they seem to shun the light
of the sun, and only crawl forward at night to feast on unclean things and fatten
on rottenness and corruption. 49
Prospectors disappointed with the gold rush could be persuaded to man homeward-
bound ships, but vessels destined for more exotic locales also demanded crews. Here is where
crimps such as James "Shanghai" Kelly and Jimmy "Shanghai Chicken" Devine plied their
trade. Frequenting waterfront bars and brothels, crimps tempted sailors with easy women,
free liquor, and laudanum-laced cigars. With their targets unconscious, crimps signed them
onto merchant vessels, collecting bonuses, termed blood money, for every body delivered. In
47 The word crimp is derived from the German krimmen, meaning "to seize or grasp with the claws or beak."
48 Benjamin Estelle Lloyd, Lights and Shades of San Francisco (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and Company, 1876).
49 Albert S. Evans, A la California: Sketch of Life in the Golden State (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft and
Company, 1873).
193
Shipyards and Labor Issues
no time, the unfortunate victim found himself heading out the Golden Gate. Since the Orient
was a popular destination, the process was commonly referred to as being "shanghaied." 50
Later, during the grain trade, crimps performed another necessary service by induc-
ing trained hands from foreign windjammers to desert their own ships and man the new
vessels being built on the West Coast, since few native lads went to sea. 51 Then, in a profit-
able cycle, these same contractors provided replacements to the short-handed foreign-
ers, supplying men for a price, normally amounting to two months' pay. Here, runners
lured sailors off incoming sailing ships and, after a brief stay in a boardinghouse, onto an
outward bounder for a nice premium. In 1891, a committee of the San Francisco Chamber
of Commerce found that $120,000 (at some $40 per head) of blood money had been paid the
preceding year in San Francisco. In addition, the boardinghouse masters would only release
a sailor after he signed over his advance, usually amounting to several weeks' pay, but often
amounting to much more (one account cited a three-month advance here in the 1870s). 52
One contemporary described the situation:
Once the boardinghouse masters got aboard he soon got among the sailors and
promised them everything if they would come and board with him — a job in
the country, a job in the mint — in fact anything. He always carried a bottle of
chain lightning — one or two drinks were all they needed. Then they would leave
their wages, in fact a full years pay, to the boardinghouse masters and perhaps
the next day they would be shipped to Liverpool. There was a great demand for
sailors, there were many ships in the bay waiting for crews. Some of the ships
paid as high as $200 blood money as well as 3-4 months board money for a crew.
If they did not have sailors enough for a crew they would fill in with greenhorns
who had been drilled in what to say to the captain. There would be 4-5 sail-
ors and the rest greenhorns. This made up the crew . . . their outfit consisted of
a "donkey's breakfast" (straw mattress), suit of oilskins, and a pair of rubber
boots. The boardinghouse master bid them goodbye and that was the last the
sailor would see of him. 53
Once aboard ship, life was scarcely better; brutalities were notorious. While by
no means a recent phenomenon (both Herman Melville and Richard Henry Dana, Jr.,
attested to the cruelties inflicted against merchant sailors in their antebellum works),
the ferocity of the attacks against merchant sailors reached frightening heights in the
period after the Civil War. In the last half of the century, the young men of America
turned from the sea — at least as far as the forecastle was concerned — and crews were
made up of indifferent sailors, landsmen, and malcontents with only a sprinkling of
bona fide salts. With few trained sailors available and more greenhands aboard than
ever before, captains were liberal in their application of shipboard justice. The "bucko
mate" would come on board at the beginning of the voyage and "knock a few of them
50 For a highly readable account of these activities, see Bill Pickelhaupt, Shanghaied in San Francisco
(San Francisco: Flyblister Press, 1996).
51 Men were induced to desert in order to crew outbound ships, forfeiting their pay in the process.
Owners, for their part, were glad not to pay a crew while the vessel was awaiting and loading cargo.
52 Robert Ramsay, Rough and Tumble on Old Sailing Ships (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1930).
53 James Roxburgh, "Recruiting Lodgers to the Sailor's Boarding House," South of Market Journal (July 1933): 9.
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down at the first shadowy show of insubordination." The widely held belief was that
discipline had to be thrust upon the untrained sailors to ensure the safety of the ship
and its cargo. Some went to extremes and their ships became known as hellships, but in
general, these men were simply hardworking and proud of their ships. One contempo-
rary sailor ruefully remembered:
In all that pertained to a smart, shipshape appearance aloft and allow, the officer
from Maine or Massachusetts always showed himself a superseaman; and if he
was called a bucko and a slave-driver he never spared himself, and his efforts
were all for the honour of his ship His pride in his ship was his ruling passion
and he often went to unheard of lengths in his efforts to uphold his reputation
for smartness. As a seaman of the times put it, "on board those downeast and
blue-nose (Nova Scotia) craft, where discipline is enforced by a plentiful use of
a belaying pin, knuckle duster and boot, the work done is stupendous, and the
ship is certainly kept in a wonderfully trim state. 54
While this seemed to excuse or palliate the horrid treatment of sailors, others spoke
out against these conditions, chastising shipping companies for employing brutal masters
and for paying wages that failed to attract competent sailors.
Our shipowners complain of the lack of good material for which to make up crews
for the merchant service, and yet they countenance and defend a system which
tends to drive seamen who have any self-respect out of the service. If they would
show by their actions that they regard the sailor as a man, with a man's feelings
and a man's rights . . . and protect him in his rights . . . they might in the course of
time find a better class of men enlisting in the service, and even those at present in
it would become better and more efficient seamen than they are now. 55
In addition to being crewed by novices, many of these craft were manned by immi-
grants. Whereas earlier generations of seamen could count a heady number of Americans
in their ranks, by the 1880s, only the officers and a sprinkling of sailors not amounting
to more than one out of five were identified as such. Samuel Elliott Morrison states that
"Yankee workmen built the clipper ship, but they were not manned by Americans." 56 A
citation from the Coast Seaman's Journal points out the schism between the American
officer and the many foreign nationals who were the sailors on the New York and New
England owned clippers and Downeasters: "American boys do not go to sea, as a rule,
except by reason of family ties, and are assured of being in a short time the officers of
vessels; and in the short time they do serve as boys they are kept aft. By such means
they learn to look upon men in the forecastle somewhat in the same way as the young
54 Basil Lubbock, The Downeasters: American Deep-water Sailing Ships, 1869-1929 (New York: Dover, 1987).
55 San Francisco Bulletin, February 10, 1865.
56 Samuel Eliott Morrison, A Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 (New York: Houghton Miflin, 1922).
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southerner was trained to look upon the negro." 57
The inherently dangerous nature of the industry caused maritime workers to
bond together into collective bodies. Among the first maritime unions for nonlicensed
sailors was the Coast Seamen's Union (CSU), established along the lumber piles of
the Folsom Street Wharf in Marchl885. 58 The sailors who plied the lumber schooners
along the West Coast were doughty and grizzled veterans, known as "the Scandinavian
navy." Disproportionately composed of Danes, Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, and other
northern Europeans (along with a healthy sprinkling of other nationalities) this work-
force had shared ethnic roots, and a history of syndicalism and working-class solidar-
ity that proved vital in these formative years. Founded by Polish immigrant Sigismund
Danielwicz and Irishman Frank Roney, the CSU protected its members from the capri-
cious labor market while improving conditions on ships that worked the coastwise
trade. 59 The following year, a separate organization, the Steamship Sailors Union,
was founded to protect the rights and interests of crews employed on coastal steam
schooners. By 1891, the two organizations came together to form the Sailor's Union
of the Pacific (SUP) and within three years, SUP, the self-proclaimed "lookout of the
labor movement," affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. Their goals never
wavered: higher wages, an end to involuntary servitude and corporal punishment, and a
commitment to better forecastle conditions. 60
In its early years, the SUP was fortunate to have found a leader who was totally
committed to the goals of the union. Andrew Furuseth, a dour Norwegian born in 1854,
emigrated to the United States in 1880. Elected SUP secretary in 1887, the craggy and
ascetic Furuseth set himself against the shipowners and their periodic attempts to lower
wages and hire nonunion crews. Boardinghouses that catered to nonunion sailors, like that
at 334 Main Street owned and operated by the notorious crimp John Curtin, were picketed
and, in one high-profile crime, dynamited. Throughout the 1890s and into the new century,
the waterfront was wracked with pitched battles when a sailing ship or steamer tried to sail
without a union crew. In 1901, a major strike occurred, and in 1902, the SUP won full recog-
nition from the shipowners. 61
57 Coast Seaman's Journal, November 9, 1889. The demarcation between forecastle and cabin was far less
marked on the Pacific coast, where a large proportion of the mates and masters had been sailors them-
selves. Many of the officers of this fleet had come to San Francisco as sailors in Cape Horn square-riggers
and then jumped ship. Finns, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, and Germans joined coastwise vessels here,
then worked their way up, starting as donkey men, winch driver or quartermaster. They "came aboard
through the hawespipe, and not through the cabin windows" to quote an old sea expression. As a result,
an egalitarianism was found on the Pacific coast that was largely missing from East Coast seafaring.
James C. Healey, Foc'sle and Glory Hole: A Study of the Merchant Seamen and his Occupation (New York:
Merchant Marine Publishers Association, 1936). See Stephen Schwartz, Brotherhood of the Sea: A History
of the Sailors Union of the Pacific, 1885-1985 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1986).
58 Earlier organizations, such as the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association (1875) and the Master's,
Mates, and Pilots (1880) protected the interests of licensed officers. David F. Selvin, Sky Full of Storm: A
Brief History of California Labor (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1975).
59 Paul Schuster Taylor, The Sailor's Union of the Pacific (New York: Arno Press, 1971). On Roney, see Ira B. Cross,
ed., Frank Roney: Irish Rebel and California Labor Leader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1931).
60 Deepwater sailing vessels were never adequately organized, and ocean steamships only partially, begin-
ning with the WWI shipping boom. See Stephen Schwartz, Brotherhood of the Sea: A History of the Sailors
Union of the Pacific, 1885-1985(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1986).
61 John Elrick. "Social Conflict and the Politics of Reform: Mayor James D. Phelan and the San Francisco
Waterfront Strike of 1901," California History 88, no. 2 (2011): 4-23.
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While the SUP was certainly willing to make their points with protests and
violent demonstrations, Furuseth was equally at home in the halls of legislature, work-
ing increasingly in Washington, DC. His first legislative victories were the Maguire and
White Acts, coming after public opinion was aroused by a listing of the brutalities aboard
the Downeasters in the Cape Horn trade. 62 The Maguire Act, sponsored by San Francisco
politico James Maguire, allowed sailors to quit vessels without penalty when they feared
for their personal safety. The White Act theoretically abolished corporal punishment and
did away with the penalties for desertion. Such brutalities — including many that went
unpunished by the courts — were published in "The Red Record" in the union paper,
the Coast Seamen's Journal, beginning in 1895. 63 Furuseth had another success when, in
1907, Senator Alger of Michigan introduced a bill that became law, "An Act to Prohibit
Shanghaiing in the United States." 64 Still, challenges remained.
In 1897, the same Supreme Court that had endorsed legal segregation (Plessy v.
Ferguson) argued in the Arago decision (Robertson v. Baldwin) that seamen were not covered
by the Thirteenth Amendment, and that a sailor could "surrender his personal liberty."
The court's reasoning was condescending, stating that "seaman are deficient in that full
and intelligent responsibility for their acts which is accorded to ordinary adults, and need
the protection of the law in the same sense in which minors and wards are entitled to the
protection of their parents and guardians." 65 For the better part of the next two decades,
Furuseth and the SUP would work tirelessly to overturn this decision.
In 1915, Furuseth won his greatest victory with the Seaman's Act ("An Act to promote
the Welfare of American Seamen in the Merchant Marine of the United States"), spon-
sored by Senator Robert M. Lafollette of Wisconsin. This act, alternatively called the
"Emancipation Proclamation for Sailors" and the "Magna Carta of the Sea," was the
breakthrough for American maritime labor, greatly improving the conditions of men living
before the mast, and establishing a hiring system ending crimping. It was a tremendous
achievement not only for the SUP but also for progressives and the labor movement in
general. As a testament to his success, Furuseth was present at the Versailles Treaty in 1919,
and although he was elected president of his union (a post he held from 1908 until 1938), he
never drew a salary greater than that paid to an able-bodied seaman. 66
The Seaman's Act of 1915 was a colossal victory for the SUP, but challenges remained.
Although World War I brought higher wages for most maritime workers, the return of
peace met with spiraling inflation, high unemployment rates, and declining wages. Strikes
in 1919 and 1921 were miserably unsuccessful, and tainted with radicalism. Association
with groups such as the International Workers of the World (IWW, or "Wobblies") did
62 The Dingley Act of 1884 had already prohibited advancements against a seaman's wages, and limited the
making of seaman's allotments to close relatives, though a loophole effectively emasculated this law.
63 "The Red Record" listed sixty-four cases of abuse (including fourteen murders) that occurred on ships
from 1887 to 1894. Tellingly, forty of these cases originated on San Francisco-based vessels.
64 By this time, the SUP could boast over 3,500 members, three-fifths of whom were listed as "Scandinavian
or other Northern European" and a war chest approaching $50,000. William Martin Camp, San
Francisco: Port of Gold (New York: Doubleday, 1948), 249.
65 While the Maguire Act outlawed the imprisonment of sailors who deserted the coastwise trade, no such
protection existed for American and foreign sailors engaged in international commerce.
66 On Furuseth, see Hyman Weintraub, Andrew Furuseth: Emancipator of the Seamen (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1959). Furuseth was succeeded as secretary by another Norwegian, Harry Lundeberg.
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much to discredit the SUP and led to plummeting membership rolls. It would also set the
stage for a violent strike in 1934.
Before discussing that event, we must first recognize the struggles of shoreside mari-
time workers. Individuals who worked "along the shore" and who were responsible for
loading and offloading vessels had organized themselves into collective bodies as early
as 1853, when the Riggers' and Stevedores' Union was formed in San Francisco. Many of
those drawn to this occupation were without viable options. As one observer reminisced:
"Stevedores are a large body of men who are 99 % driftwood from all walks of life . . . when a
young man meets with disappointment and finds himself out of work he naturally migrates
to the Embarcadero." 67
Discharging lumber from a sailing ship, for example, was as time-consuming and
dangerous as loading and sailing such a craft. Usually taking several weeks, longshore-
men suffered assorted workplace accidents and were routinely crushed between shifting
cargo. 68 Within forty years, the International Longshoreman's Association (ILA), repre-
sented the group, protecting waterfront workers from dangerous work conditions and
arbitrary hiring practices. In the Australian-born Harry Renton Bridges, the ILA and its
successor, the International Longshoreman's and Warehouseman's Union (ILWU), had
found a leader who rivaled Furuseth. 69 Turning his back on his family's real-estate busi-
ness, Bridges embraced the adventurous spirit and socialist views of his uncle. Entering
the merchant marine at age sixteen, he migrated to the United States in 1919, settling in
San Francisco during the tumultuous post-WWI years. A member of both the SUP and
the IWW, he joined the ILA in 1922.
Among the most abused of all maritime workers, longshoremen needed a visionary
like Harry Bridges. West Coast ports had a reputation for efficiency, but were notori-
ously dangerous workplaces. For example, during the 1920s, San Francisco longshore-
men faced 200 to 400 disabling injuries for every million man hours worked, equating
to between three and six disabling injuries per eight-hour shift for the roughly 2,000
longshoremen operating in the city. Accident rates (17.5 percent) were higher than for
any other occupation (nationwide they ran 10.5 percent), and mechanization did not
help this. During the four years of the American Civil War (1861-1865), 1,018 maritime
workers lost their lives; in approximately the same amount of time almost a half century
later (1909-1914), 5,445 died. 70
The finger piers that dominated the waterfront during the time of break-bulk opera-
tions, with their twin cargo booms and steam winches, employed hundreds of men to load
67 "The Stevedore on San Francisco's Waterfront: Recollections of Senator Jack Maloney," South of Market
Journal (September 1933): 9.
68 On waterfront union activism, see David F, Selvin, A Terrible Anger: The 1934 Waterfront and General Strikes
in San Francisco (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996); and Bruce Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront:
Seamen, Longshoremen, and Unionism in the 1930s (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1988).
69 On Bridges, see Charles Larrowe, Harry Bridges: The Rise and Fall of Radical Labor in the United States
(New York: Lawrence Hill and Company, 1977).
70 Boris Stern, Cargo Handling and Longshore Labor Conditions (Washington, DC: GPO, 1932).
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and unload vessels. 71 Longshoremen toiled long hours, in dangerous conditions, and with
little job security. For most West Coast longshoremen, hiring was for the day and the job,
through humiliating "shape-ups" (that favored cronyism and kickbacks) or through corrupt
"blue-book unions" (managed and controlled by the shipping companies). The anti-union
climate of many policymakers, as evidenced by the post-World War I Red Scare and the
Palmer Raids of May 1920, followed by the economic crisis of the Great Depression, further
hampered the efforts of laboring men to organize themselves into collective bodies. Local
strikes called by the International Seaman's Union and the International Longshoreman's
Association (1916, 1919, and 1921) were unsuccessful, as regional and local affiliates jealous-
ly guarded their own territory and resisted any common action to improve their situation.
Efforts at coordinated actions led to a coastwise work stoppage that began on May 9, 1934,
although the strike's real center was in San Francisco.
During this epic struggle, the ILA sought a coastwise contract, with the same wages
and conditions in all ports, and recognized the union as the bargaining agent for the
contract. Additionally, they sought a six-hour day and a thirty-hour week, in an effort to
employ as many of their members as possible in the depressed economy. The ILA wanted
an hourly wage of $1, with a fifty cent addition for overtime; most important, they sought
preferred employment for ILA members through a union-controlled hiring hall separate
and distinct from the "shape-up" that had been in place for years. The longshoremen were
joined in their strike by several other maritime unions, including the SUP. 72
On July 3, the Industrial Association, a group of waterfront employers, attempted
to break the strike by employing non-union workers to move cargo from ships docked
in San Francisco. The strikers resisted violently, attacking convoys and throwing rocks
and bottles at the strikebreakers and their police escorts. Although the port closed the
following day for the Fourth of July, many anticipated violence in the future. Governor
Frank Merriam called out the National Guard to keep the peace, and machine-gun nests
were promptly erected along the waterfront. On July 5, a running gun battle between
strikers, police, and national guardsmen resulted in the death of two protesters, Howard
Sperry and Nicholas Bordoise. An additional 32 were injured by gunfire, and 75 more
were wounded by teargas, clubs, or other weapons. July 5 is still remembered as "Bloody
Thursday" in West Coast ports. 73 The San Francisco Labor Council called for a general
strike to begin on July 16; lasting four days, it drew widespread sympathy and 120,000
participants, virtually shutting down the city. 74
71 A typical break-bulk carrier of 500 feet could accommodate 700 railroad cars' worth of freight. The
ship's crew was often idle and alongside as gangs of longshoremen worked to unload the cargo. Roy S.
MacElwee and Thomas R. Taylor, Wharf Management: Stevedoring and Stowage (New York: D. Appleton
and Company, 1961). For a good first-person perspective of working conditions facing San Francisco
longshoremen, consult Otto Hagel and Louis Goldblatt, Men and Machines (San Francisco: International
Longshoreman's and Warehouseman's Union and the Pacific Maritime Association, 1963).
72 Others included the Masters, Mates, and Pilots, the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, the
Communist-affiliated Marine Worker's Industrial Union, and the Marine Cooks and Stewards.
Founded in 1901, the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union was — along with the ILA/ILWU — among the
only maritime labor organization open to African Americans.
73 San Francisco Daily News, July 6, 1934. For first-person accounts, see Harlan Soeten, "A Seaman
Remembers the San Francisco Waterfront, Circa 1930," Sea Letter 58 (Summer 2000):14-19, and Harlan
Soeten, "A Seaman's History of the San Francisco Waterfront in the 1930s," Steamboat Bill 45, no. 4
(Winter 1988): 257-69.
74 Mike Quin, The Big Strike (Olema, CA: Olema Publishing Company, 1949).
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Eventually, federal arbitrators intervened, and the ILA received almost all it sought,
including the union-controlled hiring hall. 75 Fresh off this victory, Pacific coast maritime
workers formed the Maritime Federation of the Pacific Coast, a central body for all West
Coast maritime unions. Strikes in 1936 and 1937 reaffirmed the gains of the 1934 strike,
leading to further gains for workingmen, such as SUP control over a hiring hall and limits
on sling-load weights for longshoremen. Subsequent work stoppages, such as the lengthy
1948 walkout, showed the strength of the California unions. 76
Maritime unions such as the ILWU and SUP confronted a new reality in the post-
World War II world as the nature of maritime commerce and labor forever changed. The
advent of containerization (mechanization and modernization agreement) and the chang-
ing face of the Bay Area real-estate market spelled the end of San Francisco as a working
port. 77 By 1962, when the Port of Oakland began implementing container yards, the end was
already in sight. Just half a decade later, its revenues surpassed those of San Francisco, and
by 1971, Oakland ranked as the second-busiest port in the world. The time-consuming and
dangerous nature of break-bulk operations came to an end. Take for example, the typical
6,500-ton cargo vessel. Sixteen men worked feverishly at each hatch, loading and unload-
ing some twenty tons per hour. Even then, it could take a crew of one hundred, divided into
gangs of sixteen, five-and-a-half days to accomplish the task. Now, with containerization
and mechanization, it was done in as little forty hours and the time-consuming and danger-
ous nature of break-bulk operations came to an end. Membership in the ILWU fell by 40
percent, and membership in the SUP dwindled to less than three hundred by the 1980s.
Still, as was seen during well-publicized lockout of 2002 and antiwar protests of 2008, West
Coast shipping stops cold without the vital contributions of maritime workers.
Also essential to California's maritime history is the contribution of US Navy and
Coast Guard personnel. Their story will be told in the next chapter, as will that of recre-
ational uses of California waterways.
75 Harvey Schwartz, March Inland: Origins of the ILWU Warehouse Division, 1934-1938 (Los Angeles:
Institute of Industrial Relations, 1978).
76 In that strike, none of the nearly 27,000 ILWU members responded to government-initiated ballots that
sought to end the impasse. As a result, the Waterfront Employers turned to a new agency, the Pacific
Maritime Association, and allowed the ILWU to retain control over the hiring hall, limit sling-load
weights, and secure a sizable raise. See Howard Kimeldorf, Reds or Rackets?: The Making of Radical and
Conservative Unions on the Waterfront (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). See also Harvey
Schwartz., Solidarity Stories: An Oral History of the ILWU (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009).
77 On containerization, see Brian J. Cudahy, Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2006); Arthur Donovan and Joseph Bonney, The Box that Changed the
World: Fifty Years of Container Shipping (East Windsor, NJ: Commonwealth Business Media, 2006); and
Marc Levinson, The Box: How Container Shipping Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
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SS Red Oak Victory and Liberty Ship SS Jeremiah O'Brien
Of the several thousand merchant vessels launched from American shipyards
during the World War II, two remain afloat in San Francisco Bay. Liberty ship SS
Jeremiah O'Brien and SS Red Oak Victory are among the last vestiges of the
prodigious output of American shipyards and are currently maintained as museum
ships for education and outreach.
Jeremiah O'Brien is indicative of the utilitarian cargo ships that made up the
merchant fleet during World War II. Derisively referred to as "ugly ducklings" they
formed a vital bridge between the industrial might of the United States and our Allies
overseas. Along with John W. Brown, Jeremiah O'Brien is one of but two remain-
ing Liberty Ships (out of 2,751 built). Launched from the New England Shipbuilding
Corporation yards in South Portland, Maine, in 1943, O'Brien is named for the
Revolutionary War hero and Machias, Maine, native who captured the first British prize
in that conflict. Among her earliest and most well-known voyages was participating in
the D-Day invasion of Normandy: O'Brien made eleven successful crossings, bringing
troops, armaments, and supplies from the British Isles to the invasion site. Following
the cessation of hostilities, O'Brien was retired from service and laid up in the reserve
fleet at Suisun Bay for thirty-three years. Slated for scrap in 1960, she was saved and is
now preserved in San Francisco as a museum ship and memorial. Added to the National
Register of Historic Places and now a National Historic Landmark, the vessel claims to be
the most photographed merchant ship in the world. O'Brien steamed to Europe in 1994
to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the fateful D-Day invasion, the only surviving
member of that expedition to have done so.
Red Oak Victory is among a handful of surviving Victory ships and is the last
remaining vessel constructed at the Richmond facility. Victories, like Liberty ships, had
five cargo holds, three forward and two aft: however the Victories could carry 10,850
deadweight tons, or 4,555 net tons of cargo, a much larger load than the Liberties
could manage. Victory-class merchant ships typically carried a crew of sixty-two civil-
ian merchant sailors and twenty-eight naval personnel to operate defensive guns and
communications equipment. With a sleek, raked bow, raised forecastle, and cruiser
stern, the Victories were at once faster, stronger, and more flexible than their predeces-
sors. Victory ships were different from Liberty ships not only in tonnage and carrying
capacity but in propulsion as well, as the steam engine of the Liberty was replaced with
the more modern, more efficient, and faster steam turbine, producing between 5,500
and 8,500 horsepower and a cruising speed of 15 to 17 or more knots.
To combat hull stress, the Victory ships had their frames set thirty-six inches apart,
allowing for greater flexibility and less danger of fracture. The new design worked
remarkably well: the first Victory slid down the ways into the waters on February 28,
1944, launched from the Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation. All told, 531 Victories were
constructed by the end of the war. These fast, large-capacity carriers served honorably
in both the Atlantic and Pacific theatres: ninety-seven Victories were fitted out as troop
transports; the others carried food, fuel, ammunition, materiel, and supplies, making
Victory ships a critical maritime link to several theatres of war. The ships, like their Liberty
predecessors were built to be expendable, but one of the most useful attributes of the
Victory was cruising speed. Significantly faster than submarines, they did not have to
travel as part of an inefficient convoy.
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Among the 414 Victory ships built by the Kaiser shipyards was Red Oak Victory.
Named for the small town of Red Oak, Iowa, this vessel commemorated a town
that had the highest per-capita casualty rate in the war. Originally designated Hull
#544, her keel was laid on August 15, 1944, when construction began on the ship in
Richmond Kaiser Shipyard Number 1 by a crew of dedicated "Rosies." After a delayed
launch — it had originally been scheduled for October 31 — she was christened the SS
Red Oak Victory at 10:00 on November 9, 1944, by Edna Reiley, wife of the mayor
of the ship's namesake. On December 5, she was commissioned as a navy ship, USS
Red Oak Victory (AK-235), by Lieutenant Commander John Sayers. After a two-week
shakedown cruise, the vessel returned to the Bay Area, beginning its career as an
ammunitions carrier.
One of but ten Victory ships designated as ammunition transport vessels during
the conflict, the Red Oak Victory picked up its first load of 10,000 pounds of ammu-
nition in January 1945 at Port Chicago, located in Concord, California. Despite her
special designation, the Red Oak was indistinguishable from her Victory kin in size or
propulsion. She served in various theatres in the Pacific during the waning months
of World War II, then spent several years in the employ of the Luckenbach Steamship
Company, where she worked in the intercoastal trade (and is, apparently, the last
remaining ship afloat to have done so). The vessel also saw action in the Korean and
Vietnam Wars. In December 1968, after twenty-four years of hard work and continu-
ous service in which she had recorded no casualties, the Red Oak Victory was laid up
in the Maritime Administration's Ready Reserve Fleet in Suisun Bay, just a short sail
from where she had been launched, and just across the Carquinez Straits from where
she had loaded her first cargo. There she remained for three decades.
The only surviving vessel to have served in World War II, the Korean War, the
Vietnam Conflict, MARAD, and the public sector of the merchant marine, the Red Oak
Victory was a logical choice for a museum ship. By act of Congress, she was turned
over to the Richmond Museum Association in 1996 and transferred to her present
location on September 20, 1998. When her new owners took possession of the Red
Oak, she was in sad condition, riddled with holes where rust had eaten into her steel
sides, her remaining paint tinted brown with rust. All the yard and stay equipment was
stored below in the holds, including the massive booms and windlasses. The guns had
been removed when she was mothballed. But thanks to the Rosies' careful craftwork,
she was, remarkably, watertight. Still, it would take thousands of hours of volunteer
services, an infusion of grant monies and lots of hard work to restore her to seaworthy
condition. Thankfully, since the Red Oak Victory had been utilized in such a diverse
manner, there are several generations of men and women that have come forth to
help on this enormous project. Persons who had sailed on Victories, who had worked
in the shipyards, had been in the Navy, or who were otherwise connected to the ship
pitched in. By 2005, the Red Oak Victory had a crew of seventy-five regular volunteers,
an increase of 16 percent over their usual sixty-five regularly scheduled volunteers.
This equates to roughly 23,000 hours of labor and the equivalent of nearly $1 million
worth of restorative costs saved. These costs would have been impossible but were
entirely avoided by gracious volunteers and generous donations.
202
Shipyards and Labor Issues
Studio portrait of Matthew Turner, shipbuilder. Turner opened
his yard in San Francisco in 1868 and relocated to Benicia
fifteen years later. While in operation, Turner launched more
vessels than any other builder in North America. Over half of
these 228 craft — which included 12 brigantines, 4 barkentines,
and over 100 schooners — were launched from Benicia.
Courtesy: San Francisco Maritime
National Historical Park. Mrs.
Hunt Collection. P9, 168.
Entrepreneur Henry Kaiser was arguably the most impor-
tant industrialist since Henry Ford. His visionary strategy of
mass-producing ships and providing for his workers' well-
being catapulted the United States into a leading position as a
shipbuilding nation.
Courtesy Henry J. Kaiser
Pictorial Collection.
Bancroft Library, University
of California, Berkeley.
For most Pacific Coast longshoremen, hiring
was for the day and the job, through the
notorious and demeaning shape-up. In San
Francisco, it took place at 7 a.m. in front of
the Ferry Building.
J.'
W
m/
«£
tJ&£
3?
. ^H
I^Qn
Courtesy San Francisco History Center, San
Francisco Public Library.
203
Shipyards and Labor Issues
The Red Oak Victory, berthed in Richmond, California, is one
of the few remaining World War II-era cargo ships turned
out by local shipyards. She is currently a museum ship and is
awaiting dry-dock restoration.
The ways of the Richmond Shipyard depicted
during the height of their operation.
Photo courtesy of author.
Courtesy Henry J. Kaiser Pictorial Collection.
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
A memorial to the strikers and
sympathizers who participat-
ed in the waterfront protests
of 1934. This mural commem-
orates Bloody Thursday, and
can be found at the site where
police killed two strikers.
Photo courtesy of the author.
204
Shipyards and Labor Issues
Here, longshoremen march down Market
Street in a show of solidarity in San
Francisco's annual Labor Day parade. Harry
Bridges can be seen front and center.
The effects of labor organizers
along the waterfront are here
depicted by muralist Anton
Refregier in San Francisco's
Rincon Center.
The Union Iron Works in the
1890s. Founded by Irish immi-
grants, the UIW represented
the most important industrial
activity in the San Francisco
Bay region for more than forty
years.
Courtesy International Longshore and Warehouse
Union Archives. Anne Rand Library. San Francisco.
Photo courtesy of the author.
Courtesy www.pier70sf.org.
205
Shipyards and Labor Issues
The shipyard of Charles G. White at North
Beach. This scene was replayed countless
times at innumerable ways that lined the
San Francisco waterfront in the latter
nineteenth century.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park, A4.7090.
On July 5, 1934, 2 were killed, 32 wounded
by gunfire, and more than 75 were seriously
injured by clubs or gas.
Courtesy San Francisco History Center,
San Francisco Public Library.
The shipyards offered opportunities to
women and persons of color. In this 1942
photo by Dorothea Lange, "Rosies" line up
for their well-earned paycheck.
Courtesy Oakland Museum of California.
LNG 42080.4
206
Shipyards and Labor Issues
Headquarters of the Sailors Union of the
Pacific, located on East Street (Embarcadero)
between Market and Mission, 1911. Notice
how the union hall was surrounded by
saloons, flophouses, and the like.
Courtesy Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley.
The frenetic pace of industrial activity is captured in this
image from 1943.
Courtesy Henry J. Kaiser
Pictorial Collection. Bancroft
Library, University of
California, Berkeley. PIC-122.
207
CHAPTER 12
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
Just as indigenous Californians used the waterways of the California for diverse means,
so too did the Euro-Americans who came in their wake. While we have already seen how
the maritime milieu was used for resource acquisition, economic activity, and as a medium
for trade and avenue of immigration, we now look at how California waterways have been
viewed from military and recreational perspectives. While the Mexican-American War
used California's waters as a platform for naval combat, this chapter looks at the roles played
by the US Navy and Coast Guard in the region. We then close with a look at the ways that
California waterways inspired others to more cultural, recreational, and hedonistic pursuits.
The predecessors of the US Coast Guard were among the most visible manifestations
of federal authority in frontier California. Indeed, representatives from the Revenue Cutter
Service, US Lifesaving Service, and US Lighthouse Service were ubiquitous in nineteenth-
century California, enforcing federal maritime laws, collecting customs, providing rescue
to those in distress, and fulfilling myriad other duties. 1 The Coast Guard, in its various
iterations, played a formative role in California's maritime history. Following the Mexican-
American War, a small contingent of naval personnel was responsible for many of the
responsibilities more traditionally fulfilled by the various Coast Guard representatives, but
with the onset of the gold rush it was obvious that they were overmatched. Beginning with
the years immediately following the transfer of the region to the United States, the Coast
Guard took on diverse responsibilities in San Francisco and other West Coast ports. A larger
and more professional revenue marine, including state-of-the-art cutter C. W. Lawrence,
soon arrived to relieve overburdened and undermanned naval officers from the drudgery of
collecting duties and regulating ship borne commerce. Relieved naval authorities were now
free to enforce law and order throughout the Bay Area and to take on other responsibilities
around the state.
Lawrence arrived on October 3, 1849, and immediately took up duties as collector of
customs. San Francisco was designated a "port of entry," meaning that all foreign vessels
headed for any California port needed to call there first to pay customs duties and other
fees. Ports of delivery, where cargos were discharged, were established at San Diego and
San Pedro, though the long coastline and lack of law enforcement agents meant that smug-
gling was as pervasive in the American chapter of California's history as it had been in the
Spanish and Mexican ones. But collection of appropriate duties and fees was just one aspect
of Lawrence's work. In addition to enforcing customs regulations, she and her adjunct, the
severely outdated Polk, cruised the coast, offering assistance to distressed vessels or inter-
vening on behalf of aggrieved seamen or masters who flagged them down. To deal with these
The history of the US Coast Guard (USCG) can be confusing. The various agencies that compose the
USCG, and the multifaceted nature of its mission are to blame. Among the first federal regulatory agen-
cies to be commissioned, the service began in 1790, and was called, variously, the Revenue Marine or
the Revenue Cutter Service. It operated under the Department of Treasury and in 1915, was joined with
the US Life-Saving Service. In 1939, it added the US Lighthouse Service to its agency, and in 1946, the
Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation. In 1967, the USCG was transferred to the Department of
Transportation, and in 2002, to the Department of Homeland Security. In times of war or national emer-
gency, the Coast Guard can be transferred to the Department of the Navy.
208
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
issues, a court of admiralty was established in 1851, replacing the irregular proceedings of
local courts — often rife with fraud and embezzlement — with bureaucratic efficiency. A new
customhouse likewise replaced the outdated adobe structures, themselves remnants of the
Spanish and Mexican officials who predated the Americans, then in use.
Lawrence and her followers performed a variety of duties in law enforcement, revenue
collection, and lifesaving operations. Notable was her work in listing various important
landmarks along the Sacramento River, resulting in a series of printed charts, the first known
for that waterway. The irony that the Lawrence itself was lost to grounding off Ocean Beach
attests to the inherent danger of sailing and operating vessels in the waters of the Bay Area,
even for experienced personnel. 2 The amount of submerged cultural artifacts and resources
that litter the waters of California is further testament to this fact. The sheer number of
shipwrecks listed in official registries represents not just a list of maritime tragedies, but an
opportunity for in-depth study to reveal the importance of maritime affairs on the history of
California and the West.
The patrol of the cutter Argus is illustrative of the multifaceted mission of the early Coast
Guard in California: between March 8 and May 30, 1852, her crew freed one grounded vessel,
quelled a mutiny on another, and boarded three ships suspected of evading revenue payments.
Captain William Hunter, the senior officer of the service, commended Lieutenant William C.
Pease and his crew for their dedication to duty, recognizing that "it would be impossible to
smuggle goods by sea to Sacramento or Stockton, the entrance to those places being so well
guarded" by the Benicia-based^rgMs. 3 Another example of the numerous and diverse duties
facing revenue cutter servicemen is seen in the career of the 110-foot Golden Gate. Built in
Seattle in 1896, she entered service on San Francisco Bay on May 13, 1897, performing general
law enforcement, including towing, fumigating vessels, and patrolling local regattas. During
the 1906 earthquake, Golden Gate served as a floating bank, when gold reserves from the city's
financial institutions were transferred to her vault for safekeeping. Golden Gate remained in
service until her decommissioning at the conclusion of World War II. 4
These myriad duties were not the only manifestation of maritime regulation on the
West Coast. Among the most pressing needs for California mariners was the establish-
ment of aids to navigation. When the gold rush began, not a single lighthouse or other
aid to navigation existed along the entire Pacific coast. In 1848, the US Congress, recog-
nizing that such facilities were vital to maritime trade and transportation, authorized a
survey to assess the coastline and determine the best locations for lighthouses, lightships,
and lifesaving stations. 5 The US Coast Survey, predecessor to the US Coast and Geodesic
Survey, issued a report that recommended lighthouse service be inaugurated at several
points along the coast. On March 3, 1851, Congress appropriated $15,000 for a lighthouse
2 See James P. Delgado, "In the Midst of a Great Excitement: The Argosy of the Revenue Cutter
C. W. Lawrence," American Neptune 45, no. 2 (Spring 1985): 119-31.
3 Cited in Dennis Noble, "A Brief History of US Coast Guard Operations in California," California State
Military Museum, [written pre-2001], http://www.militarymuseum.org/USCGinCA.html.
4 Noble, "Brief History."
5 The foremost authority on the history of California lighthouses is Ralph Shanks, Guardians of the Golden
Gate: Lighthouses and Lifeboat Stations of San Francisco Bay (Petaluma, CA: Costano Books, 1990). See
also California's Lighthouses: Standing Tall through Time, a publication of Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific
Maritime History (San Diego: Maritime Museum of History, 2002); and Betty S. Veronico, Lighthouses of
the Bay Area (San Francisco: Arcadia Publishers, 2008).
209
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
at "Humboldt Harbour." Had it been built, it would have been the first lighthouse on the
Pacific coast of the United States, but the appropriation was found inadequate and the
contract canceled. 6 Despite this setback, plans continued apace, and between 1852 and
1856, sixteen lights (lighthouses and light ships) were established along the Pacific coast
from San Diego to British Columbia.
The Treasury Department awarded the contract for the first lighthouse to be built
on the Pacific coast to the Baltimore firm of Francis X. Kelly and Francis A. Gibbons,
and the ship Oriole arrived from that port late in 1852, bringing with it all the neces-
sary crew and supplies to commence work. By December that year, the foundation for
the first operating light was laid on Alcatraz Island, and two years later, it became the
first functioning light on the Pacific. Others were added on the Farallones, Fort Point,
Point Reyes, Point Loma, Santa Barbara, Fort Bonita, Point Pinos, Point Conception,
Humboldt Harbor, Crescent City, and St. George's Reef. The latter was a marvel of
construction: built on Northwest Seal Rock (only 100 yards in diameter), it is one of the
few wave swept lights in the country. With construction limited to four days per month
due to tidal conditions, the 144-foot-tall lighthouse took ten years to complete, with the
station finally opening in 1892. A veritable armada of workboats and sundry vessels were
required to service these installations. The Lighthouse Service maintained and operated
its own fleet of tenders, small craft that shuttled supplies and work parties to the scat-
tered and isolated facilities while maintaining other lesser aids to navigation like buoys
and channel markers. The tender Shubrick made history when it arrived in San Francisco
on May 27, 1858, as the first steam-powered vessel in the service. 7
In addition to the lighthouses, a pair of lightships operated in California waters
at locations where conditions prevented lighthouse construction but where safety and
security necessitated aids to navigation. These small (120-foot to 135-foot) red-hulled
vessels anchored for months at a time, marking sea-lanes and shipping channels. One
was based at Blunt's Reef, near Cape Mendocino (which, in 1916, rescued 150 survivors
from the liner Bear), and the other was at the approach to San Francisco Bay, where it
inaugurated service on April 7, 1898. All shipping lines converged at the San Francisco
Bay Lightship, moored thirteen miles outside the Golden Gate. 8 Despite these precau-
tions, navigating along the Pacific coast remains a perilous and hazardous occupation.
After the collision of Arizona Standard and Oregon Standard in January 1971 off a dark
and fog-shrouded Golden Gate, 20,000 barrels of oil spilled onto the Bay and immediate
coastal waters and shoreline. The impact of that spill ended the discretion of captains to
take ships — tugboats and barges excepted — through Racoon Straits and the South and
Bonita Channels. It also prompted the establishment of the Coast Guard Vessel Traffic
Service (VTS) funded through the Ports & Waterways Safety Act of 1972, which created
Not until 1865 did Humboldt Bay receive an operable lighthouse, a 45-foot-high masonry tower with
a light visible for miles on a clear night. The structure served the needs of mariners well until it was
replaced by a new lighthouse at Table Bluff in October 1892. Ralph Shanks, Lighthouses and Lifeboats on
the Redwood Coast (Petaluma, CA: Costano Books, 1978).
US Coast Guard Historian's Office, "Shubrick, 1857," last updated January 26, 2012,
http://www.uscg.mil/history/webcutters/Shubrick_1857.asp.
James Gibbs, Lighthouses of the Pacific (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishers, 1986). Excellent cultural landscape
reports exist for both Port Bonita Lighthouse and Fort Point Lifesaving Station.
210
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
the VTS system for the entrance and waters of San Francisco Bay. 9
Revenues collection and maintenance of aids to navigation were two of the missions
entrusted to the Coast Guard; a third dealt with lifesaving. The US Life Saving Service was
a civilian agency of the federal government whose mission it was to rescue mariners and
passengers from distressed vessels and to protect the cargo and vessel itself, if possible.
On June 20, 1874, Congress authorized lifesaving stations at San Francisco, Bolinas Bay,
and Humboldt. Over the next four years, eight such stations were established along the
California coast, beginning with the Golden Gate Lifesaving Station in San Francisco (at
Ocean Beach) and the Humboldt Bay Lifesaving Station near Eureka. Of these original
eight, it should be noted that six (the inaugural station at Ocean Beach and complemen-
tary ones at Southside, Fort Point, Point Reyes, and Point Bonita) were established to
protect the approaches to San Francisco Bay. As late as 1929, ten separate lifesaving stations
were responsible for California waters north of San Francisco, attesting to the volume
of seaborne activity in the region and its inherently perilous nature. Today, thanks to
increased vessel capability and, most notably, USCG aviation initiatives, there are just ten
such stations responsible for the entire California coast. 10
Camanche
Defense of San Francisco Bay took many forms, and was always a major determinant of
national naval policy. During the American Civil War, policymakers and local authorities
feared Confederate raiders would descend on the city, intent on torching the town or
making off with large quantities of Sierra gold. To prevent this, harbor defenses at Fort
Point and Alcatraz were strengthened as were the military installations at Mare Island
and Benicia. To assuage fears that this was not enough, the Navy sent a new Passaic-
class vessel, USS Camanche to the Bay in 1864.
The single-turreted monitor had been built by Secor Brothers of in Jersey City,
New Jersey, in 1863. Disassembled, for she was not meant to be used in the open
waters, she was transported around Cape Horn in the brig Aquila. Shortly after her
arrival in the city, Aquila sank at the dock, taking Camanche to the bottom with her.
Raised and reassembled, Camanche was launched in the waters of San Francisco Bay on
November 14, 1864, exactly one year after Aquila's sinking.
Commissioned just after the conclusion of hostilities, Camanche was the first
ironclad on the Pacific, one of but two that served the region for a quarter century
(the other being the twin-turreted Monadnock). The vessel was laid up for much of her
career at Mare Island, serving briefly as a school training ship for the California Naval
Militia before being sold in 1899. She served out her days as a coal barge, and her
remnants are thought to lie beneath the mud near Alameda's Coast Guard Island.
9 US Coast Guard, "Sector San Francisco, Vessel Traffic Service (VTS)," last updated January 26, 2012,
http://www.uscg.mil/dll/vtssf/history.asp.
10 The first USCG air station opened at San Diego on July 1, 1934. San Francisco inaugurated air station
service on November 15, 1940.
211
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
The Coast Guard, then, played a pivotal role in securing California's waterways, and
the region reciprocated. San Francisco, in particular, played the role of home port to Coast
Guard crews and ships that guarded local waters as well as to those that patrolled the Arctic
waters as part of the Bering Sea Patrol. Captain Michael Healy of the revenue cutter Bear
called the city home, as did many junior and senior officers of the service. 11 Additionally,
maritime education — such as the forerunner to the California Maritime Academy, a special-
ized campus of the California State University that issues licenses to merchant marine offi-
cers — became formalized in the city during this same period. 12 A California Naval Militia
further supplemented the formal military establishment then in place. 13
Just as the Coast Guard provided a variety of services to maritime professionals,
so too did the US Navy, whose officers mirrored those of other nations in extolling the
virtues of San Francisco Bay. From time immemorial, naval officers commented on San
Francisco's attributes. Its wide, protected anchorages and extensive shorelines made it
ideal for vessel construction, and its natural advantages made it a tempting target that
called out for defense. Shortly after acquiring the region from Mexico, the US Navy, led by
Commander Cadwalader Ringgold, undertook a "laborious and toilsome duty of surveying
a vast unknown sea, buoying out the channel and removing the many obstacles attending
intercourse with the mines." 14 While that agency — described by historian James Delgado as
"a major presence . . . and the mightiest representative of federal power in, California" — it
was the Army and its Corps of Engineers that undertook improvements to the dated harbor
defenses at Alcatraz and Fort Point. 15 The navy sloop Warren, meanwhile, anchored in the
waters off Benicia, served as a holding cell for dozens of recalcitrant deserters and mutinous
sailors, and a government arsenal located in that town provided ample ammunition should
harbor defenses be put into action.
To meet the demands of shipping and defense, the Navy opened a large ship-
yard and repair facility at Mare Island in 1853. As the first and only naval dry dock on
the Pacific coast, the North Bay fixture ensured that San Francisco was capable of
producing and repairing vessels to project American power throughout the Pacific.
Subsequent and ancillary facilities were located at Hunter's Point, Port Chicago,
Treasure Island, and elsewhere during World War II. 16 Indeed, despite its contempo-
rary reputation as a haven for peace activists, the Bay Area was once home to a robust
military presence, one on whom the communities relied on a major employer. The
11 On Healy, see Dennis Noble, Captain "Hell Roaring" Mike Healy: From American Slave to Arctic Hero
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010).
12 Douglas K. Peterson, "A Brief History: The California Maritime Academy," 2006, Campus History
Collection, CMA Historical Archives.
13 On the California Naval Militia, see Mark J. Denger, "History of California State Naval Forces," last
accessed April 24, 2012, www.militarymuseum.org/CNM.html. See also Charles Bencik, "San Diego
Naval Militia," Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 30, nos. 1-3 (1994): 15-23, 14-18,6-10.
14 Alan Fraser Houston, "Cadwalader Ringold, US Navy: Gold Rush Surveyor of San Francisco Bay and
Waters to Sacramento, 1849-1850," California History 79, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 208-21, quotation on 213.
15 John Arturo Martini, Fortress Alcatraz: Guardian of the Golden Gate (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2004), 3.
16 The facilities at Hunter's Point were converted from commercial to military use. The US Navy took over
the property in 1940, ending nearly a century of private ownership. The previous owners had received
government endorsement for the expansion of the facility — at one point, the largest dry docks in the
world — in exchange for the military's option to purchase the property in case of national emergency.
212
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
facilities at Mare Island deserve special attention. 17
Mare Island is a four-mile-wide spit of land located on the Napa River, near the present-
day community of Vallejo. Surveyed by Perez Ayala during his 1775 reconnaissance of the
bay, it was known as "Isla Plana" (Flat Island) until 1835. In that year, a crude ferry carrying
livestock was caught in a squall while crossing the Carquinez Straits. The animals panicked,
causing the ferry to capsize, with the presumed loss of much of the cargo. Several days later, a
prized white mare belonging to the Mexican comandante of Northern California, Mariano G.
Vallejo, was found living on Isla Plana. Upon finding the mare, General Vallejo renamed the
island to "Isla de la Yegua," or, as it is known today, Mare Island. 18
Less than two decades later, Commodore John Drake Sloat was ordered by the
Secretary of the Navy to determine a site for the United States' first Pacific naval station.
Having claimed California for the United States four years earlier, Sloat was intimately
familiar with the possibilities, and recommended Mare Island, "free from ocean gales and
floods," to his superiors. When the government approved Sloat's recommendation in 1852,
the Department of the Navy purchased the island for $83,410 from its joint owners, G. W. P.
Bizzell, H. Aspinwall, and Mary S. Macarthur, making Mare Island the first permanent US
naval installation on the "West Coast. 19
After purchasing the land, the Department of the Navy ordered the construction of
dry dock for Mare Island at a cost of $610,000.The dry dock, constructed in New York, was
built in sections so that it could be shipped around Cape Horn. By fall 1853, the basin for the
dry dock was completed and the dock was in place. However, because the Navy could not
take over until 1854, crews were authorized to undertake private contracts in the interim.
Thus, the first vessel to utilize the Mare Island facilities was a commercial steamer, Pacific. 20
In September 1854, Commodore David Glasgow Farragut arrived with his family to
commission Mare Island. Upon his arrival, Farragut immediately took command of Mare
Island with the charge of creating a shipyard to support the Pacific fleet. During his tenure,
Farragut continued overseeing the creation of Mare Island and ship maintenance opera-
tions. In 1856, much to Farragut's pleasure, Congress appropriated the necessary funds
for the construction of a vessel at Mare Island. On March 3, 1859, the USS Saginaw, a four-
gun, steam-driven gunboat was christened at Mare Island. Saginaw was the first of 513
vessels built during Mare Island's service. Farragut did not get to see Mare Island's first
vessel (he was transferred to Washington, DC, in July 1858), and little did he know that his
groundwork would be the foundation of what would eventually become the largest station
of its kind in the nation.
While the Mare Island yard built and repaired various naval and merchant craft,
residents of San Francisco feared the installation might be insufficient to protect the city
or, worse yet, might actually encourage an attack. During the American Civil War, worried
Californians petitioned Washington for an increased naval presence that took the form of an
17 On Mare Island, see Sue LemmonandE. D. Wichels, Sidewheelers to Nuclear Power: A Pictorial Essay
Covering 123 Years at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard (Annapolis, MD: Leeward Publications, 1977).
18 Arnold Lott, Long Line of Ships: Mare Island's Century of Naval Activity in California
(Annapolis: United States Naval Institute Press, 1954), 5.
19 Mark J. Denger, "Mare Island: A Navy Yard is Born," California State Military Museum, n.d.,
http://www.militarymuseum.org/Mare%20Island.html.
20 Ironically, before the Mare Island facilities were completed, naval ships were forced to seek repairs at the
Benicia depot and foundry operated by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.
213
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
ill-fated monitor, Camanche. 21 When this vessel failed to live up to expectations, representa-
tives from the Russian navy were dispatched for a lengthy stay in the region, much to the
relief of nervous Bay Area residents. 22
The years following the Civil War proved to be very exciting for Mare Island. In 1891,
the facility's first self-made dry dock was completed after nineteen years of work. The
525-foot dry dock was built on a foundation of cut granite rocks. The graving dock was the
first of many constructed at Mare Island and greatly increased the productivity of the yard.
However, because the majority of US Navy vessels were stationed on the East Coast, many
vessels serviced at the naval yard were not American. In fact, many were owned by future
rivals of the United States, such as Russia and Japan.
Besides repairing other vessels, Mare Island also found itself acting as the headquar-
ters for civil defense and emergency response for the West Coast. In effect, from the late
1800s until the early 1900s, Mare Island was the federal government's forward operating
base. For example, it was Mare Island that dispatched warships to put down Indian upris-
ings in the Pacific Northwest. When political instability threatened the overland flow of
American goods across Central America, Mare Island sent ships to ensure the safe passage
of American goods and citizens from the Caribbean to the Pacific. Mare Island also mount-
ed several rescue missions to the Arctic during this time, and in the aftermath of the San
Francisco earthquake of 1906, Mare Island sent men, supplies, and ships to help search-
and-rescue and fire-suppression operations within the city. 23 Ultimately, if there was a
need for military or humanitarian assistance anywhere on the West Coast or on the Pacific
Ocean, the resources of Mare Island had a good chance of being involved.
During the postwar years, the naval station received a variety of improvements. In
1869, the station's hospital, which would become famous internationally for its work with
prosthetics during World War II, was completed. The navy's first interdenominational
church, St. Peter's Chapel, was dedicated in 1901; today, it features the largest collection of
Tiffany stained-glass windows in the United States. That same year, the station switched
from coal to oil for power. The change not only saved the yard money but also provided a
cleaner living environment for those in Vallejo. Spectators from all around the Bay Area
came to marvel at the new clean energy source.
It was also during this time that Mare Island entered into the world of submarine
warfare, one of the cornerstones of the installation for years to come. In 1900, the navy
purchased its first submarine, Holland, and set out to create its own fleet. Two of these
submarines, Grampus (A-3) and Pike (A-4), were laid in San Francisco by Union Iron Works.
Grampus and Pike were later commissioned at Mare Island in 1903, thus beginning a long
relationship with the submarine force.
Five years later, the Mare Island facility again entered unchartered waters in
American naval history. On January 4, 1911, USS Pennsylvania entered the dry dock for
alterations involving the addition of a flight deck. A mere two weeks after Pennsylvania's
21 Robert Ryal Miller, "The Camanche: First Monitor of the Pacific," California Historical Society Quarterly
45 (1966): 113-24.
22 C. Douglas Kroll, "Friends in Peace and War": The Russian Navy's Landmark Visit to Civil War San
Francisco (Washington, DC: Potomac Press, 2007).
23 Freeman, Frederick N., "California Naval History, The Navy and the Earthquake and Fire of 1906,
A Report by Lieutenant Frederick N. Freeman April 30, 1906," California Military Museum,
http://www.militarymuseum.org/PerrySFEarthquake.html.
214
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
arrival, a platform 133 feet, 7 inches long, and 31 feet, 6 inches wide was constructed over
the deck. Then, on Januaryl8, 1911, Eugene B. Ely started his Curtiss biplane at Selfridge
Field at the San Francisco Presidio, and after circling the ship, landed on Pennsylvania's
flight deck at forty miles per hour. Ely's landing marked the beginning of naval aviation as
we know it today. By the time the first decade of the 1900s came to a close, Mare Island had
established itself as one of the premier naval installations on the West Coast. The infra-
structure, sailors, shipbuilders, and marines of Mare Island had set themselves apart in
the best traditions of the naval service, and as World War I drew closer, Mare Island would
become a more important asset than ever to the United States. 24
World War I proved to be a time of innovation, and expansion for Mare Island. It
was during this time, that the facility came of age as the primary naval shipyard for the
US Pacific fleet, again making breakthroughs in naval technological history. Expansion
began with the completion of a second dry dock in 1910The structure, the largest dry dock
at Mare Island up until that point, was 750 feet long and took ten years to complete. The
new facility would be key to much of the advancement produced at Mare Island. The first
major project undertaken at the updated shipyard was the launching of USS Jupiter. Laid
on October 18, 1911, the vessel was commissioned two years later as the first electronically
driven vessel in the United States Navy. Jupiter later became the first American naval vessel
to utilize the Panama Canal, and in 1920 was recommissioned as USS Langley, America's
first aircraft carrier. During that same period, the Mare Island yard turned out USS Ward in
seventeen days, setting the stage for the rapid shipbuilding techniques that later industrial-
ists would perfect.
But while day-to-day shipbuilding and maintenance provided the bulk of the work
on Mare Island, the shipyard's submarine building ultimately made the facility famous. In
1916, Mare Island was appropriated $5 million to begin construction of its first submarine;
however, the promised funds were not given until 1925. Despite the appropriations, the
construction was halted again due to naval armament negotiations occurring in Geneva
between 1926 and 1927. By August 1927, it became apparent that an agreement would not be
reached. Therefore, on August 2, 1927, two days before the Geneva conference ended, the
keel was laid for USS Nautilus.
Nautilus was a giant among American submarines of the day; it was 317 feet long with
an underwater displacement of 3,960 tons, although the London Naval Conference later
limited the size of submarines. Nautilus launched on March 15, 1930, becoming the first
of what would be many of submarines Mare Island would construct. By 1936, Mare Island
was building another submarine, Pompano, and another, Sturgeon, was on order. One year
later, yet another submarine, Swordfish, was placed on order for Mare Island, and by 1938,
Sturgeon launched. The same year, Mare Island received appropriations worth $12 million
to build the submarine tender Fulton. Arrangements were also made by the Department of
the Navy for Mare Island to build at least one submarine every year, and a submarine tender
every other year. When February 1941 arrived, Mare Island was pumping out submarines:
five were scheduled to be laid, and three entered the water for the first time to begin sea
trials. Ten months later, America's world would change, and so would Mare Island's.
24 In the interim, the city hosted a visit by the Great White Fleet, an attraction viewed by thousands. The
May 7, 1908, New York Herald reported on the enthusiastic welcome, claiming that "under the weight of
the crowd . . . the entire continent seemed to tip westward."
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Pampanito
Built at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1943, USS Pampanito (SS-383) is a 312-foot-
long Balao-class submarine with an extensive record of public service. At the time of
her launching, she represented the cutting edge of submarine technology with greater
diving capacity, a robust armamentarium, and sophisticated electronic equipment. These
tools were a distinct advantage to the crew of eighty submariners manning the vessel.
Pampanito completed six patrols during the World War II, seeing action in a
number of theatres in the Pacific and earning a half-dozen battle stars. Her travels took
her from Pearl Harbor to the South China Sea, and from the San Francisco Bay to the
Straits of Taiwan. During her career, she sank or damaged six enemy vessels, totaling
some 27,000 tons. Among her most notable accomplishments was rescuing over seventy
Australian prisoners-of-war victimized by an earlier submarine attack on the former
President Harrison, a vessel the Japanese had captured earlier in the war, in an attack
that Pampanito itself had helped perpetrate. Decommissioned at the close of hostilities,
she was laid up on Mare Island, and thereafter served as a Naval Reserve training ship,
before being stricken from the Navy register in 1971.
Pampanito was subsequently transferred to the San Francisco Maritime Museum
Association (1976) and turned into a museum and memorial, opening to the public in
1982. Each year, some 100,000 visitors tour the vessel, where they learn the history of
this ship and of submarine warfare in general. Volunteers and donors have painstakingly
restored Pampanito to her 1945 specifications, creating a realistic experience for her
twenty-first-century guests. Among her notable programs is an overnight program for
almost fifty youths who experience life aboard a vintage submarine.
In 1986, the vessel was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, at
which time she was designated a National Historic Landmark. Currently maintained by
the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association, Pampanito is berthed at Pier 45,
near Fisherman's Wharf. Today, the vessel serves as both museum ship and memorial to
members of the US Submarine Service.
December 7, 1941 began like any other day at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.
However, at precisely twelve minutes past 11:00 a.m., an urgent transmission was received
over the fleet broadcast, "Air Raid on Pearl Harbor. This is no drill." Harbor and station
defenses were immediately manned, all leaves canceled, all guard posts doubled, a strict
censorship of all mail and communication established, and Marines at the yard entrance
began stopping and completely searching all vehicles before they even reached the main
gate. By the end of the Mare Island's first hour of World War II, the facility was ready for
war. And it needed to be: during the week of December 18-24, 1941, Japanese submarines
operating in California waters sunk eight American vessels. Coast Guard escort vessels
were assigned to fleet protection, but to no avail: on December 20, the tanker Emidjo was
victimized by enemy fire near the Blunt's Reef Lightship. Worried San Francisco fishermen
prayed that a hastily constructed antisubmarine net would protect them inside the Golden
Gate, while a network of 361 submerged mines managed by the outpost at Fort Baker creat-
ed hazards to navigation. 25
25 At 7,000 tons, the net stretched for seven miles from the Marin Headlands to the Peninsula.
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Mare Island reached its prime during World War II. At the start of the war, the naval
yard employed 6,000 men, primarily assigned to shipbuilding and repair duties. At the
height of the conflict, over 40,000 civilian and military personnel worked at Mare Island,
and the yard became one of the most important facilities servicing the Pacific fleet. In fact,
the workforce became so large that base and local housing quickly became exhausted. To
address this issue, a bus fleet was created specifically for Mare Island. The fleet quickly
became one of the busiest transportation systems in the world, driving an estimated
800,000 miles per month.
The majority of Mare Island's work during the World War II was in retrofitting and
repair projects. Many battle-damaged ships from the United States, and even Allied navies,
came to Mare Island for repair before returning to service. British cruisers and destroyers
were a common sight at Mare Island; the Russians even had four submarines repaired there
during the war. Mare Island also provided six American destroyers and cruisers with new
bows. By 1944, repair to damaged vessels alone had consumed 4,269,865 days of work. 26
USS San Francisco
Among the most notable naval vessels associated with the City by the Bay is the epony-
mous USS San Francisco. Launched in 1933, San Francisco was among the finest cruis-
ers of her day: at nearly 600 feet long, she achieved speeds of over 30 knots. Heavily
armored and with a robust armament, she and her crew of 1,000 were a force to be
reckoned with by opposing navies.
Commissioned in Mare Island, the ship played a dramatic role in both foreign
policy and military history. During the 1930s, she was flagship of several squadrons that
visited Latin America as part of Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, cruising both
the Atlantic and Pacific as part of her prewar operations. Present at Pearl Harbor, she
played a minor role in that engagement, emerging relatively unscathed.
While San Francisco was fortunate in avoiding major catastrophe at Pearl Harbor,
and where she played a vital if inglorious part in American naval operations in the Pacific
in the ten months following that disaster, she endure a much bloodier fate in what
is widely considered the pivotal event of the Pacific War, the Battle of Guadalcanal.
She suffered heavy damage in that engagement, including devastating attacks from
Japanese aircraft and a severe treatment at the hands of several larger Japanese
warships. Admiral Daniel Callaghan was among the several dozen crewmembers who
lost their lives in the engagement, and the ship itself was only saved thanks to the heroic
efforts of those who survived the encounter. The vessel eventually limped to safety and
made it back to the Bay Area for extensive repairs, and she was awarded the Presidential
Citation Unit for her actions at the Battle of Guadalcanal. San Francisco continued in
service throughout the remainder of the conflict, but was decommissioned in 1950. She
was sold for scrap in 1959, but a piece of the USS San Francisco remains today.
On November 12, 1950 a memorial was built to commemorate the men who
were killed while serving on the San Francisco, and for the ship herself. Located at Land's
26 Among the most notable projects was that associated with the USS San Francisco, a heavy cruiser
that played a formidable role in the Battle of Guadalcanal. Today, the battle-damaged bridge of that
ship forms the basis of a memorial at Lands End in San Francisco, near what was once Fort Miley. See
Timothy G. Lynch, "The USS San Francisco: Tale of a Ship and the Men who Built and Sailed Her," The
Argonaut: Journal of the San Francisco Historical Society (Fall 2007): 72-99.
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End, the memorial consists of the battle damaged bridge wings, replaced in 1943 at
Mare Island, and which are set on a course for Guadalcanal. Currently maintained by the
Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the memorial is the site of an annual gathering
and remembrance ceremony.
Despite repair work, the facilities at Mare Island continued building ships and
submarines. In 1943 alone, Mare Island constructed eighteen destroyer escorts over a
period of nine months, equating to over 24,000 tons of shipping. Mare Island also built
and/or refurbished 22 submarines during World War II. The submarine force from the
yard would go on to make Mare Island proud, sinking a confirmed 252 enemy vessels,
or 988,357 tons of shipping. By the end the war, Mare Island built more than 300 land-
ing craft, 33 small craft, 31 destroyer escorts, and 17 submarines. Mare Island was truly a
major player in World War II.
In addition to this impressive list of wartime achievements and accomplishments,
Mare Island also played host to one of the nation's most compelling wartime dramas. The
base served as holding cell for the largest mass mutiny in United States history. On July 17,
1944, 320 servicemen and civilians were killed when an accident at the munitions loading
facility of Port Chicago led to a massive explosion. 27 The destruction of the SS Quinault
Victory and the SS E. A. Bryan was heard as far away as Sacramento, with the explo-
sion rattling windows in San Francisco. Most of those killed and wounded were African
American stevedores, and many of the survivors refused to return to work until conditions
improved. Fifty were eventually charged with mutiny, and all were convicted in a racially
charged trial. 28
After the end of World War II, the resources and personnel assigned to Mare Island
began to subside. However, the importance of the Mare Island facility did not diminish. As
the United States entered the Cold War, the nation's "silent service" became more important
than ever, and, as always, Mare Island was there to keep America's submarine force running.
In the 1960s, the decision was made to build nuclear and retrofit current submarines
at Mare Island. USS Sargo was the first of seventeen nuclear submarines launched from
Mare Island. Mare Island also played an important role in increasing the US nuclear arma-
ment by converting fast-attack submarines to ballistic missile class and by keeping existing
submarines in service. At the same time, Mare Island also outfitted submarines with special
surveillance equipment for spy missions against the Soviet Union.
The Cold War also brought about a new program for personnel assigned to Mare
Island: off-site repair services. Mare Island set records impressive by even modern stan-
dards. Under this program, repair crews responded extensively throughout the world,
supporting a variety of vessels in operational settings. Some examples included repairing
a nuclear aircraft carrier in Alameda, servicing ballistic missile submarines in Guam, and
even assisting the Egyptian Navy with their diesel submarines. Mare Island was a global
player for NATO and the United States abroad.
27 On Port Chicago and the Concord Naval Weapons Station, consult John Keibel, Behind the Barbed Wire:
A History of the Concord Naval Weapons Station (Columbia, SC: Arcadia Press, 2009).
28 Among the allegations: white officers wagered to see whose crew could load the munitions fastest. See
Robert Allan, The Port Chicago Mutiny: The Story of the Largest Mass Mutiny in United States Naval
History (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 2006).
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In addition to Mare Island's traditional support role, the Cold War also brought about
a new mission to the naval yard: training boat forces. In 1967, the Naval Inshore Operations
Training Command moved from Coronado, California, to Mare Island because of the
adjacent Napa-Sonoma Marshes State Wildlife Area. The move was made because the
similarities between the operating environment of Vietnam and the wildlife area allowed
the Mobile Riverine Force units — designed to search and destroy Vietcong forces through-
out the vast swamp waterways of Vietnam — to develop their skill sets in a comparable
environment.
It was during this period, too, that the last vessel built at Mare Island was commis-
sioned. In 1970, USS Drum, a ballistic missile submarine was launched as part of Mare
Island's nuclear submarine program. Although Mare Island continued to service the Pacific
fleet for twenty-six more years, Drum marked the end of an age at the naval yard.
In 1993, Congress approved the report of the Department of Defense's Base
Realignment and Closure Commission. Among the bases to be closed under the plan was
Mare Island. At the time of the closure, Mare Island employed more than 9,000 workers.
By the time the yard closed in 1996, nearly 1,000 buildings, encompassing over 10.5 million
square feet of space, were on property. This included 416 housing units, 20 ship berths,4
dry docks, 3 finger piers, a medical clinic, a school, 2 fire stations, and 21 other industrial
complexes. On-base amenities also improved to include a golf course, athletic fields, swim-
ming pools, tennis courts, and even riding stables. Mare Island had certainly come a long
way from its founding in 1854.
Despite the sadness and political controversy surrounding the closure of Mare Island,
its history must not be overlooked. For over 126 years, Mare Island served the US Navy and
the Bay Area as a premier naval installation and community employer. From its founding to
its closing, Mare Island served in the finest traditions of the naval service. 29
While the longest-serving shipyard in the Bay Area, Mare Island was not the only one.
A comparable facility had been established at Hunter's Point as early as 1867, though at that
time it was operated by a commercial entity and not the federal government. With a pair of
1,000-foot graving docks built on solid rock, the facility was operated first by the California
Dry Dock Company, which negotiated several contracts with the federal government. For
years, it was considered the largest facility in the world, with room to accommodate the
biggest warships or passenger steamers. During the interwar period, the Navy contracted
with the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Company (which assumed ownership of the facility in
1907 after its own hydraulic yard was destroyed in the previous years' earthquake) for use
of the docks, since the facilities at Mare Island were inaccessible to deep-drafted vessels
owing to the silting of the Napa River. In 1940, the navy acquired the property outright,
converting it into one of the major shipyards on the West Coast and the only such facility
between San Diego and Bremerton, Washington. Though the navy operated the yard until
1974, the facility was a major employer in the region until its 1994 closure. 30
Moreover, from 1891 the navy used Treasure Island as a training facility (the first
of its kind on the West Coast) and maintained a depot at Richmond's Point Molate (in a
facility formerly used for wine storage and transport) to ensure an adequate reserve of
29 Sue Lemmon, Closure: The Final Twenty Years of Mare Island Naval Shipyard (Vallejo, CA: Silverback
Books, 2001).
30 During the intervening two decades, it served as a commercial ship repair facility.
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fuel for its vessels. It is clear, then, that the navy has a long and deep relationship with
the greater Bay Area.
In addition to these shipyards and sundry other operations, other important manifes-
tations of military presence existed in the greater Bay Area. While the navy was in charge of
the ship repair and production facilities, the US Army undertook harbor defense and forti-
fications. Defensive positions had been present in the area since the time of the Spanish;
they became more prominent, however, during the American period of California's history.
To fortifications within the Bay at Alcatraz (begun in 1854, they were completed and
manned a half decade later, in 1859, and represented the first permanent harbor defense
batteries on the West Coast) and at Fort Point were added those on either side of the Golden
Gate. In the 1890s, the army began a major modernization of the harbor's coastal fortifica-
tions. Fort Mason joined the Presidio (the center for army operations in defense of the west-
ern United States) at the southern terminus while Forts Baker, Barry, and Cronkhite were
situated on the Marin headlands.
Not surprisingly, the militarization of the Bay Area saw its greatest reach during
World War II, which dominated the social, economic, and political landscapes of the mid-
twentieth century and set in motion momentous events that still shape the world. The San
Francisco waterfront piers played a crucial role in this process. The entire region formed
a giant network of defense industries transformed the area into "Fortress San Francisco."
The San Francisco Port of Embarkation delivered men and supplies "the length and
breadth of the Pacific, serving as a funnel through which all military materiel was passed." 31
Two-thirds (1.6 million) of all troops headed to the Pacific theatre departed from the
Golden Gate on over 800 troopships, including 300,000ferried from the hastily constructed
Fort McDowell on Angel Island. Over 93,000 troops departed in August 1945 alone. Fort
Mason, made manifest by the realization that during the Spanish-American War that the
Presidio was unfit to handle the demands of the modern military, served as headquarters of
the embarkation effort and coordinated the movement of some 23 million tons (or half of all
US Army cargo) on over 4,000 freighters. The facility served as the logistical and transport
hub for American military operations in the Pacific and controlled a network of shipping
facilities that encompassed nearly twenty structures spread over some 210 acres. Materials,
military cargo, and embarked troops moved via the State Belt Railroad Line (following the
Embarcadero from south of Market to the Presidio) to a network of piers and warehouses
at Fort Mason or shipped out of the Oakland Army Terminal. 32 Letterman Hospital, on the
grounds of the Presidio, quickly became one of the busiest medical centers in the nation,
attesting to the grim nature of the work being carried out by the soldiers, sailors, and civil-
ian personnel of the massive military-industrial effort. During the war, virtually the entire
stretch of San Francisco waterfront — not to mention countless associated facilities — were
commandeered by the federal government under the command of General Homer M.
31 David E. Snow and Erwin N. Thompson, San Francisco Port of Embarkation, Ft. Mason: Historic
Structure Report (Denver: Pacific Northwest/Western team Branch of Historical Preservation,
National Park Service, n.d.), 14.
32 The Belt Railroad was established in 1890 and expanded several times between then and the early 1930s.
At its height, it ran from the Presidio to south of China Basin, and boasted eight locomotives. Served by
three transcontinental railroad lines, the Oakland Army terminal could accommodate prodigious quan-
tities of cargo. Together with Fort Mason, it employed over 30,000 military and civilian personnel, who
handled more than 350,000 freight-car loads during the conflict
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Groninger. 33 The facility saw operation through the Korean Conflict and into the 1960s,
until its role was supplanted by the facility in Oakland. As in other ways covered by this
study, the maritime military uses of the greater San Francisco bay region were impressive.
While the aforementioned uses of California waterways for martial purposes were
and are important, there were also more peaceful ways to interpret the maritime milieu.
Among the most notable are as inspiration for cultural and artistic works, and as a place of
play and recreation. These more lighthearted pursuits are covered in the closing section of
this chapter.
Mariners and others have often taken inspiration from the marine environment.
For some, it is a muse arousing artistic and cultural expressions, which manifest in paint-
ing, poetry, or the visual arts. For others, the waterways are venues for sport and athletic
competitions and areas of diverse recreational activities.
California is home to some of the most important marine artists and the setting for
major works of maritime literature. Early depictions of maritime life in California include
the journal entries of early European explorers, who marveled at the natural beauty of the
region, and the gloriously detailed charts and maps created by members of these early expe-
ditions. Travelogues, journals, diaries, and other primary sources reveal much about the
seascapes of California and of the peoples who utilized them in a variety of ways. They also
reveal a striking degree of condescension, insensitivity, and racism, but remain among the
most genuine interpretations that one can find of early indigenous-Euro-American contact.
Later accounts, such as those of Richard Henry Dana, depicted the maritime frontier and
the daily lives of seamen and other maritime laborers struggling to find their place in an
increasingly American setting. Two Years before the Mast, in particular, and other docu-
ments relative to the gold rush show the impact of acquisitive activities on the region, and
a changing paradigm of how the maritime world was perceived. 34 Major works of literature
centered on California's maritime milieu were penned into the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century. Colorful reminiscences by memorable sailors like Fred Klebengat and by
talented scribes like Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson make for rewarding reading
that portray the maritime realm with a realistic, if sometimes unromantic, bent. 35
While California authors provided a firsthand account of maritime life to landlub-
bers, marine artists added visual reinforcement to the mental images provided by these
wordsmiths. Noted and notable among these were Charles Patterson, John Stobart, Joseph
Lee, Gideon Jacques Denny, John Bertonccini, Harlan Soeten, and William Coulter, all of
whose masterful compositions portrayed the maritime realm with a striking verisimilitude. 36
Coulter, a native of Ireland, was especially noted for his treatment of sailing ships in the Bay
during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as was his dramatic depiction of the
33 The most thorough treatment of this time is James W. Hamilton and William J. Boyce, Jr., Gateway
to Victory: The Wartime Story of the San Francisco Army Port of Embarkation (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1964).
34 For a good overview of this period in American maritime literature, consult Hester Blum, The View from
the Masthead: Maritime Imagination and Antebellum American Sea Narratives (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2008).
35 See, for example, London's Tales of the Fish Patrol, Cruise of the Snark, and John Barleycorn.
36 On Patterson, see Robert Lloyd Webb, Sailor-Painter: The Uncommon Life of Charles Robert Patterson
(Mystic, CT: Flat Hammock Press, 2005). On Stobart, see Adam Koltz, "John Stobart: A Celebration of
Pacific Maritime Heritage," Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime Heritage 34, no. 1 (1995): 22-27.
221
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aftermath of San Francisco's 1906 earthquake and fire. Long recognized as the chronicler
of San Francisco's waterfront, his career matched the emergence of San Francisco as one of
the world's premier centers of maritime activity. 37 He portrayed the final days of sail and the
rapid proliferation of steam with a consummate view of both ships and harbor, immortal-
izing a golden era of maritime commerce. 38 Bertonccini, known affectionately as "Johnny
the Painter," focused on life among the Arctic whalers, and presented a window into a world
rarely seen by outsiders. As captain of the whaling bark Jeanette and of the APA vessel Star
of Alaska, he frequently called at San Francisco, and his paintings found a receptive audi-
ence and critical acclaim that waned with his death. 39 Later works by masters such as Anton
Refregier imparted notions of social justice, environmental degradation, racism, and patriotic
fervor to the region's maritime history. The collection of twenty-seven murals housed at San
Francisco's Rincon Center speaks to these issues and attest to his immense talents.
Supporters of maritime history likewise strove to preserve the rich maritime heritage
of the region, while educating the public to its imminent disappearance. Beginning in the
1950s, a group spearheaded by Karl Kortum — who in 1963 became a founding member of
the National Maritime Historical Society — began working toward the establishment of a
world-class maritime museum, complete with a collection of historic ships unrivaled on the
West Coast. Through several decades, the San Francisco Maritime Museum has risen to
that challenge and has now grown to become a National Park that hosts millions of visitors
each year. 40 Their message of maritime preservation, interpretation, and presentation has
inspired similar organizations throughout the region. Efforts to preserve Victory (Red Oak)
and Liberty (Jeremiah O'Brien) ships, World War II-era submarines (Pampanito), aircraft
carriers (USS Hornet) and battleships (Iowa), the presidential yacht Potomac, and assorted
other craft have awakened in the greater Bay Area populace a deeper awareness of and
appreciation for the region's rich maritime history. 41
Karl Kortum
Among the many individuals committed to preserving and perpetuating the maritime
history and heritage of San Francisco was Karl Crouch Kortum. Born in San Bernardino
and raised on a poultry ranch in Petaluma, Kortum was instrumental in the founding
of both the National Maritime Historical Society and what is now the San Francisco
Maritime National Historical Park. A Sea Scout in his youth, Kortum often pointed to this
as his introduction to ships and sailing.
Kortum's passion for maritime history is traced to his service on board the bark
Kaiulani, the last American merchant ship to voyage under sail, in 1941. The voyage took
37 The rise of San Francisco to maritime prominence also occurred at the same time as the advent of
photography, leaving a rich collection of maritime photographic images that document this processes.
On these, consult Wayne Bonnett, A Pacific Legacy : A Century of Maritime Photography, 1850-1950 (San
Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1991).
38 On Coulter, see James V. Coulter, W.A. Coulter: Marine Artist (Sausalito: Sausalito Historical Society, 1981).
39 Mary Jo Pugh, "A Seaman's Life in Watercolors," Sea Letter, http://www.nps.gov/safr/local/bert.html.
40 A comprehensive and accurate history of this museum can be found in Nancy Olmsted, "At the End
of Our Streets Are Spars: San Francisco's Maritime Heritage Becomes a National Park." manuscript,
Historic Documents Collection 652, Box 24, GMP series, J. Porter Shaw Library, San Francisco Maritime
National Historical Park.
41 Steven E. Levingston, Historic Ships of San Francisco: A Collective History and Guide to the Restored
Historic Vessels of the National Maritime Museum (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1984).
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Kortum around both Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, instilling a love for "all
things maritime." His service aboard merchant ships during World War II further cement-
ed this love, and with the return of peace, Kortum dedicated himself to preserving
America's maritime heritage. Through tireless work, he campaigned for the creation of
a West Coast institution for the research and study of local maritime history to allow for
the preservation and interpretation of America's seafaring heritage. The establishment of
the San Francisco Maritime Museum in 1950 realized this ambition, and the subsequent
acquisition and restoration of Balclutha paved the way for what would become the
premier collection of museum ships on the West Coast.
The San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park contains a diverse set of
resources. The major holdings of the park include the buildings and grounds of the
Aquatic Park National Historic Landmark (NHL) District, seven major historic vessels (six
are NHLs), a collection of museum objects relating to West Coast maritime history, an
archive of original documentary material, a library of published materials, and a brick
warehouse building, now leased as the Argonaut Hotel, which contains a visitor center.
This represents the largest museum collection in the National Park Service.
The J. Porter Shaw Library — the largest maritime research library on the West
Coast — contains tens of thousands of volumes and other printed materials, including the
world's largest collection of whaling literature and WWII naval records. The library serves
as the research portal to the park's thousands of rare archives, plans, photographs, ship
models, marine artwork, small craft, and maritime artifacts.
While Kortum's first commitment was to the institution he helped found, he often
championed similar causes elsewhere. He was instrumental in working with preserva-
tionists to restore historic vessels from Honolulu to Philadelphia, and from Galveston to
Great Britain. He was a guiding voice behind the creation of New York's South Street
Seaport as well as the World Ship Trust and the National Maritime Historical Society.
Kortum's legacy lives on in the biannual award conferred by the Library Friends
Group of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park for the best work dealing
with the maritime history of the West Coast of the United States.
While artists, authors, and museum professionals took inspiration from California's
waterways, other were drawn to that environment by a desire to challenge themselves,
others, and nature itself. Sailing and rowing clubs sprang up at various locations around
the greater Bay Area, with seasonal competitions among local yacht clubs. As early as the
1850s and 1860s, match racing was carried out by sloops brought to California aboard
East Coast square-riggers, with commercial vessels regularly engaging in popular Master
Mariner races. San Francisco Bay provided the roughest and most dramatic sailing in
the country, and locals who earned their money by working on the Bay wanted to show
off their abilities. Impromptu regattas pitted crews from anchored grain ships against
those from scow schooners, while more formal Independence Day competitions saw
representatives from such entities as the San Francisco Yacht Club (founded in 1869, it
held its inaugural regatta that summer), Corinthian Yacht Club (based in Tiburon and
founded in 1886), and Vallejo Yacht Club (1900) entertain competitors from around the
world. Big-boat ocean races pitted sailors against one another along the California Coast
and beyond, while smaller regattas enjoyed popularity inside the Golden Gate. Notable
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local yacht builders included Sausalito's Myron Spaulding, an iconic sailor who frequently
competed in prestigious international competitions. 42 Prominent local builders such as
the Stone, Nunes, and Stephens families (along with Spaulding and Matthew Turner, who
designed and built a number of champion yacht for his fellow San Francisco Yacht Club
members) developed a series of distinctive local classes, including Birds, Bears, Pelicans,
and Golden Gates as San Francisco sailors became known the world over. While the inno-
vations were important, other sailors continued to prefer models — particularly the center-
board sloop, favored in the waters of San Francisco Bay — long after others elsewhere had
abandoned them. The use of fiberglass in competitive yacht racing — an innovation largely
tied to Spaulding — allowed that impresario to rival the Herreshoffs of Rhode Island as
among the most important sailing innovators ever, and the development of the ultra-light
(attributed to Santa Cruz engineers) model revolutionized yacht design worldwide. The
2012 America's Cup competition reflects the status that the greater San Francisco Bay Area
has in the international yachting community.
Rowing was a major sport in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — trac-
ing its origin to Whitehall boatmen — and gained a wide following due to the prominence
of national champions such as Henry Peterson. They spawned a number of rowing clubs
whose members can still be seen racing their sculls near Aquatic Park, or along waterways
that are alternatively choked with recreational boaters, intrepid swimmers, and day- trip-
ping fishermen.
The development of Aquatic Park is itself a tale worth telling. Once known as Black
Point Cove, the region saw myriad uses since its first development in the years following the
gold rush. Home to a smelter, woolen mill, and sundry other tenants, it was a microcosm
of the San Francisco waterfront writ large. Diverse industrial activity and an ambitious
bay- filling project left the waters polluted with raw sewage and industrial waste: swim-
ming and other recreational uses were forbidden, often for months at a time. Eventually,
after the military displaced the industrial polluters as the primary tenant, conditions
improved and the San Francisco Recreation League applied for permission to use the
waters for its purposes. Rowing and swimming clubs — such as the South End and Dolphin
Clubs — replaced the industries that once called the cove home, as the inevitable and
inexorable process of gentrification converted the waters from industrial hotbed to recre-
ational community 43 The largesse of federal dollars made possible by the Works Progress
Administration furthered the transformation, as the creation of Aquatic Park attests. In
1939, the Bathhouse opened and after an interlude where the park was used by the military
(1941-1948) it became home to a Maritime Museum, opened in 1951. In 1984, Aquatic Park
received National Historical Landmark status. 44
Other individuals saw the sea as a destination in and of itself. Passenger cruise lines
became popular with the advent of steam technology: previously, passengers had been
a low-cost way to fill out empty staterooms on vessels that had mail contracts or were
42 Carl Nolte, "A Legend on the Sausalito Waterfront: Myron Spaulding — Yacht Designer and Renaissance
Man," Sea Letter 62 (2002): 8-11.
43 The South End Rowing Club, established in 1873, still occupies the premises.
44 On Aquatic Park, see Bill Pickelhaupt, San Francisco's Aquatic Park (San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing,
2005). See also James P. Delgado and Stephen A. Haller, "A Dream of Seven Decades: San Francisco's
Aquatic Park," California History 64, no. 4 (Fall 1985): 272-82.
224
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
engaged in more mundane pursuits. By the end of the American Civil War, cruises were
touted for their restorative properties and trumpeted as vacations in and of themselves. In
1912, the port was visited by Cleveland, described as "a mighty liner, one of the type that
circles the globe with hundreds of tourists." 45 The popularity of cruise lines departing
from California ports to within the Pacific Basin and to destinations beyond grew phenom-
enally in the years following World War I. 46 Both San Francisco and Los Angeles featured
multiple lines that delivered passengers to Polynesia, the Mexican Riviera, and other exotic
locales. Passenger liners catered to wealthy customers seeking a genteel experience apart
from their everyday lives. Increasing costs and the advent of commercial airlines eventually
caused the cruise industry to change its strategies: during the 1960s and beyond, cruise-
ship companies concentrated on creating a casual environment that provided extensive
on-board entertainment. As the emphasis shifted from delivering passengers to a particular
destination to the shipboard experience itself (replete with lavish theatrical entertainments)
a whole new generation of customers flocked to waterfront piers in search of recreation on
the high seas. Even today, massive cruise liners call at San Francisco and other California
ports, whisking away pleasure-seekers, honeymooners, and countless others.
It is clear, then, that the myriad recreational uses of California waterways are as
important today as at any time in the past, and that the diverse ways in which contemporary
Californians enjoy the region's maritime environment are as complex as ever. Subsequent
generations of Californians will undoubtedly continue to use the waterways of their region
for purposes as diverse as those outlined over the course of this study.
Since time immemorial, the region we know as California has had a complex and
often-contradictory relationship with the sea. Used as commercial highway, trash dump,
living space, martial theatre, playground, site of resource acquisition, or inspiration, the
waters of California were as important to past generations as they are to current ones.
California, in general, and the Bay Area, in particular, are rich in historic districts, sites,
buildings, and structures that chronicle the region's maritime heritage. From foundries to
dry docks, from shipbuilding facilities to historic vessels, remnants of the maritime foun-
dations upon which the region was built are readily accessible, though often endangered.
With responsible stewardship — made possible through historic preservation efforts such as
those outlined here — current residents of California can ensure that these waters and the
stories they hold and tell will be available for future generations.
45 Cited in Michael R. Corbett, Port City: The History and Transformation of the Port of San Francisco, 1848-2010
(San Francisco: San Francisco Architectural Heritage Press, 2011), 96.
46 Roger Cartwright, Cruise America: A History of the American Cruise Ship (Charleston, SC: The History
Press Ltd., 2010). See also Fred A. Stindt, Matson's Century of Ships (Kelseyville, CA; Stindt Publishers,
1982); and Lynn Blocker Krantz, Nick Krantz, and Mary Thiele Fobian, To Honolulu in Five Days:
Cruising aboard Matson's S.S. Lurline (New York: Ten Speed Press, 2001).
225
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
Mare Island was the first dry
dock on the Pacific coast, and
remained in service for nearly
150 years. This image shows
vessels alongside the dry dock.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park., G.H.
Livingston Collection. A11. 17, 452.14 ps.
Karl Kortum (with glasses),
founder of the San Francisco
Maritime Museum, with
associates Gordon Fountain
(center) and Gordon Riene
aboard C. A. Thayer in 1957.
Fountain had accompanied
Admiral Byrd to the South Pole
in 1926 aboard Bear. Kortum
was instrumental in preserv-
ing maritime history world-
wide, and his passion for San
Francisco's maritime history
was matched by few others.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park,
A9.38, 795 n.
226
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
Schooner Aggie off Mare Island.
Owned, in turn, by yachtsmen
E. A. Wiltsee and J. V. Coleman,
Aggie lost the 1892 San Francisco
Yacht Club regatta by a mere
two seconds.
San Francisco Bay has long
held attraction for recre-
ational sailors and fitness
enthusiasts. Here, members of
the South End Rowing Club
participate in a friendly prac-
tice session in Aquatic Park.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park,
B7.222g.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.
A12. 36853 pi.
227
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
Members of the Golden Gate
Park Lifesaving Station pose
with their rescue craft for
the photographer.
The horrors of the Port Chicago
disaster are evident in this
photograph from July 17, 1944.
Over 200 men lost their lives
in the explosion, registered by
seismic gauges as equivalent to
a 3.1-magnitude earthquake.
Museum ship Balclutha greets
visitors to Hyde Street Pier.
Flagship of the San Francisco
Maritime National Historical
Park, Balclutha is part of an
impressive fleet of historic
vessels, and representative of
the countless objects held by
that entity.
Courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.
A12.23, 053 n.
Courtesy Naval Historical Center.
Courtesy Paul Judge.
228
Martial and Recreational Uses of California Waterways
The dramatic painting by
Charles Robert Patterson
of Great Admiral arriving
though the Golden Gate
shows the inspiration that
artists have taken from San
Francisco's maritime milieu.
Courtesy Robert Lloyd Webb, Sailor-Painter: The Uncommon Life
of Charles Robert Patterson (Flat Hammock Press, 2005).
Two views of historic preservation and prom-
ulgation. In the first, the decrepit remains
of steam schooner Wapama lie rotting on
the grounds of the former Kaiser shipyard in
Richmond. The vessel, last remaining example
of the steam lumber fleet so important in West
Coast maritime history, has been condemned
and awaits final disposal. In the second, a young
volunteer contemplates her contributions upon
the launching of Grace Quan in 2004.
It is through the work of organizations
such as the San Francisco Maritime National
Historical Park that the first fate is avoided,
and the second guaranteed.
Courtesy Paul Judge.
229
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